Software or Hardware?

[jason006]

Theres something strange about my computer. Its running xp pro and its build by dell. The strange thing is sometimes it will restart itself (its not the blaster worm). I'm not sure if its overheating or whatever it is. Also when I start up my computer and double-click my computer icon, it takes almost 5 minutes to load up. The whole time all I see is a flashlight searching for the icons. Btw, its not a slow cpu, its a P4 2.8HT w/ 800fsb. I can't figure out if there is something wrong with the harddrive or if it is a software issue. I did scandisk already on all the harddrives but that didn't do a thing. Please someone help me out. If can't fix it, I might just format the drives.:sigh:

 

[ekÆsine]

test the hard disks one-by-one, test it alone and disconnect all other hard disk. you need to isolate which disk is causing the problem. use a disk from another computer and test your disks on another computer if possible.

formatting may do nothing. if i remember correctly there was something about switching from PIO to DMA mode. can't remember if that had to do with slow hard disks or not.

 

[jason006]

test the hard disks one-by-one, test it alone and disconnect all other hard disk. you need to isolate which disk is causing the problem. use a disk from another computer and test your disks on another computer if possible.

formatting may do nothing. if i remember correctly there was something about switching from PIO to DMA mode. can't remember if that had to do with slow hard disks or not.

So you think it is more likely to be a harddrive problem? I'll check it out on thursday when I have time. I think it is possible that xp isn't compatible with my old HP cd-rw. You think?

 

[stan-the-man]

Call Dell,
Everyone has trouble with dell,Dell is hell.
Take it back and ask them.

 

[jason006]

Call Dell,
Everyone has trouble with dell,Dell is hell.
Take it back and ask them.

hahaha! i'd rather not. I heard that they got awful customer support and you have to be on the phone with them for hours. Also, I'm not sure if its my cd-rw or software thats causing problems, so I'm not sure if they'll warranty it.

 

[stan-the-man]

Theres something strange about my computer. Its running xp pro and its build by dell. The strange thing is sometimes it will restart itself (its not the blaster worm). I'm not sure if its overheating or whatever it is. Also when I start up my computer and double-click my computer icon, it takes almost 5 minutes to load up. The whole time all I see is a flashlight searching for the icons. Btw, its not a slow cpu, its a P4 2.8HT w/ 800fsb. I can't figure out if there is something wrong with the harddrive or if it is a software issue. I did scandisk already on all the harddrives but that didn't do a thing. Please someone help me out. If can't fix it, I might just format the drives.:sigh:

Yes format,but do you have a Windows XP disk to install it again ???

I doubt it so whats next ???

 

[jason006]

Re: Re: Software or Hardware?

Yes format,but do you have a Windows XP disk to install it again ???

I doubt it so whats next ???

believe it or not i do have the XP Pro disk I'm eligible to get it from Microsoft for free + 13.00 shipping because I work for a retailer that sell their products.

 

[jason006]

thanks for the tip microbell. i checked the device manager and there are no errors or conflicts. i ran norton system works and there are disk errors. the problem doesn't occur anymore at the moment. I hope it'll stay that way. keep my fingers crossed.