It's a Dell Dimension 2400, and it's behaving very oddly. I reformatted the hard drive, installed XP Pro from a Dell CD that did not come with that computer (he didn't have his CD on him, so I borrowed it from his colleague since he was losing money with no computer; I assume it's just the OS when it has a separate driver CD; do some of Dell's OS CD's include the drivers?), and then installed all the programs that the client needed. I then got the drivers from the Dell website (chipset, audio, video, and network). It was running great the whole time I was working on it, which was for many hours.
The next morning, the client started to use it. It worked fine for a little bit, but then started to give errors like the following:
"Instruction at "0x00000000" memory could not be read. Click OK to terminate the program."
Program: Explorer.exe
"The application failed to initialize properly (0Xc0000044). Click OK."
Program: Firefox
"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000012d). Click OK."
Program: iexplore.exe
It came to a point where even RIGHT-clicking on MY COMPUTER and attempting to select "Properties" would cause issues (gave an error message saying the action could not be performed).
When I checked it out later on, sure enough, it was doing exactly that. And even when I tried shutting the computer down, it said I was not authorized to do so. Very odd.
It even got to the point where the computer slowed way down and the desktop background image would go away and the solid color of the desktop background appeared (the color that is part of the Desktop Theme that is currently being used).
I did some googling, and found a post where one guy replaced the RAM, and that fixed it. I read another post where it also could be an old video driver, but I figured that couldn't be it, because I had downloaded the latest video driver from Dell's website.
I then tested the RAM. Ran MEMTest86+ for about 1.5 hrs. It made 2 passes and detected no errors during that time. I also took out the RAM and resat it. Forget if that was before or after the test.
Used the computer after the RAM test and it worked great for a while, but then slowed down and gave all the same errors after about 1.5 hrs.
I have yet to replace the RAM, but since the RAM passed, I'm not sure that is the issue. Of course, I have read that sometimes you have to run it overnight before errors appear. I will replace the RAM tomorrow to see if that fixes it, however, I have my doubts that is it, as these errors were not occurring before I reformatted the HDD. However, there were at least 5 viruses on it, and a bunch of spyware, as there was no protection on it. That's why he had me fix it in the first place.
Suggestions?
The next morning, the client started to use it. It worked fine for a little bit, but then started to give errors like the following:
"Instruction at "0x00000000" memory could not be read. Click OK to terminate the program."
Program: Explorer.exe
"The application failed to initialize properly (0Xc0000044). Click OK."
Program: Firefox
"The application failed to initialize properly (0xc000012d). Click OK."
Program: iexplore.exe
It came to a point where even RIGHT-clicking on MY COMPUTER and attempting to select "Properties" would cause issues (gave an error message saying the action could not be performed).
When I checked it out later on, sure enough, it was doing exactly that. And even when I tried shutting the computer down, it said I was not authorized to do so. Very odd.
It even got to the point where the computer slowed way down and the desktop background image would go away and the solid color of the desktop background appeared (the color that is part of the Desktop Theme that is currently being used).
I did some googling, and found a post where one guy replaced the RAM, and that fixed it. I read another post where it also could be an old video driver, but I figured that couldn't be it, because I had downloaded the latest video driver from Dell's website.
I then tested the RAM. Ran MEMTest86+ for about 1.5 hrs. It made 2 passes and detected no errors during that time. I also took out the RAM and resat it. Forget if that was before or after the test.
Used the computer after the RAM test and it worked great for a while, but then slowed down and gave all the same errors after about 1.5 hrs.
I have yet to replace the RAM, but since the RAM passed, I'm not sure that is the issue. Of course, I have read that sometimes you have to run it overnight before errors appear. I will replace the RAM tomorrow to see if that fixes it, however, I have my doubts that is it, as these errors were not occurring before I reformatted the HDD. However, there were at least 5 viruses on it, and a bunch of spyware, as there was no protection on it. That's why he had me fix it in the first place.
Suggestions?
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