WVRunner

Hi,
I'm having trouble with my Dell Dimension 3000. For no reason it will just lock up and do nothing. I have to turn off the power and restart it to get it to "move". It happened last night and I noticed that the clock didn't change time until I turned the computer off and on again.

I contacted Dell support and the rep suggested I do the PC restore. This will take it back to the original settings. How much trouble will this cause me. For instance, I have Verizon DSL. Will I have to reinstall before I will have internet access? Also, I just paid to renew my subscription of Norton Internet Security and I had a hard time getting it to update. I bet that will get screwed up.

Does anyone have any idea what could be wrong? I've scanned for viruses and didn't find any.

I appreciate your help! Janis

AH64ID

My Inspirion 8500 had an issue locking up... they finally replaced it with this fantatsic 9300.. I LOVE THIS THING...

Anyways.. you will want to back all your files up first. Do you have an external drive? If not, find a buddy with one... my backup file is 17gb, so it wont fit on a DVD or CD...

The restore process is pretty simple, yes you will have to resintall all programs, etc. I dont use the restore CD anymore.. I formatt my machine about 1-2 times a year to clean it off and start fresh (the internet hides so much ลลลล on these things). I suggest goining onto dell.com and downloading all the drivers for your computer, and saving them on a CD.. this way when you install them you are installing the current version the first time and dont have to update so much.

ldivinag

if you have the original WINDOWS XP cd, you can reinstall windows without losing much (if not any...)

takes about 1-2 hours...

the_supernerd

Make sure that you scan for spyware also. Download, update, and run Spybot from www.spybot.info. I fix computers locally and about 3/4 of the problems people have are with spyware and viruses. Norton can also cause a lot of problems. I recommend fully uninstalling Norton and installing AVG. AVG is free and all the updates are free. AVG uses a lot less memory than Norton and you will notice a difference. I also use Hijackthis. It is more advanced than spybot, but works great.

If nothing else fixes the problem, then you will have to restore. Make sure that you backup everything first because your hard drive will be completely erased. You can sometimes restore without formatting, but I have seen that cause even more problems. It can also leave any viruses or spyware on the computer. The difficulty in restoring depends on what you have on the computer.

I have never worked with Verizon DSL, but if it is similar to SBC Yahoo DSL then it should work without doing anything complicated. Eventhough you just updated Norton, I would not recommend reinstalling it.

AH64ID

you can also use adaware personall. its free from lavasoft.com works very well and is easy to use too.

WVRunner

Hi,

I've run Spybot and found a few bugs but the problem still exists. Dell didn't furnish a Windows disc, that is why I have to do the "PC Restore". I've heard the same advise about Norton before, too bad I didn't find out about them before I paid the $39.99 for the renewal. Oh well, as far as lessons go, it is a pretty cheap one!

Any other advise will be appreciated,

Janis

anthony1

iTrader: (1)

I'd suggest you do a disk defrag and run full checkdisk before you do a restore. sure, restore would work because it basically reformat your drive and brings you back to the point where you unpack your computer from the box. Windows use your hard drive for swap memory. Along with internet surfing and mempry swap, the hard drive gets framented. when it gets excessively fragmented, it will cause what looks like a memory issue or lockup. Performing a disk defragment onve a month atleast prevent problems as such.

A clean way of doing defrag is to set the virtual memory to 0 then reboot and do defrag. After defrag then set the virtual memory so that both initial size and maximunsize are the same. I fyou have enogh HD space then set it to atleast 2048 MB....you can have upto 4096 per drive ( I think )

To get to the virtual memory setting, right click on "My computer" then properties, then Advanced tab, then performance option, then "change".
(I'm not using XP to type this so I'm not sure if XP is the same but should be close)

to get to defrag, open my computer, right click on your "C" drive then properties, then tools then " defrag now" (I think) you can perform "analyze" first to see how bad it is. I think you'll find that it should be done. Click on the "defragment" to start. This process can take anywhere from 15 min. to over night. I's suggest you start it just before you turn in. You can just turn off the monitor and go to bed.

I hope I dont' sound too mumble jumble.

Good luck

the_supernerd

Download Hijackthis, run a system scan, save a log file, and then either post it here or PM it to me and I will see if there is anything running on your computer that could be causing those problems.

Localmotion

reformating doesnt take that long.

I would wipe it clean and reformat. Its safe to reformat every 4 months. Just to make sure ou dont have any unwanted programs on there.

WVRunner

Hi guys,

I defragged the hard drive. I also ran spybot again and downloaded and ran adaware. Lockup hasn't happened again since then. I'll wait and see before going through the restore process.

Thanks for all the imput. Janis

CJM

Fact of the matter is:

-You need a real antivirus (norton and macafee are horrible and owned by the same company, and slow down your pooter). I highly suggest avast or avg, both are free and simple, are updated constantly and work much better than anything off the shelf.

-You need spyware removal tools, no matter what you do, you will eventually get some spyware/adware. Running the programs once a week should eliminate the problems. But remember, use several different ones-this is b/c they all workoff a data base (that may or may not updated alot or at all) and can only catch what they have in that database.

I would get:
-Spyware terminator, been running this for ages and it catches everything.
-Spybot
-Adaware free

Dont get hijack this, unless you understand how to use it you may remove something thats needed and thats bad.

When you scan with these tools if the program says something about the spyware that it is trying to remove is running all you need to do is reboot and start in safe mode.

Most pooters you can do this by: reboot and pressing delete, backspace, f12, f8 or escape when the pc is first starting up. This brings you to a menu that has a whole load of options, for our purposes you want "safe mode with networking". Choose this and the pooter will begint o load windows. A bunch of prompts will come up about the screensize and junk, just click ok.

Once its fully started up, run your scan tools again and voila it should remove the spyware thatw as running in memory. The reason this works is b/c when the pc was just running normally the spyware was running and due to a conflict of it running it cannot be removed. Starting in safemode meas windows only loads the basics and you can remove the spyware..

Then make backups:

Get a dvdrw drive (ad cdrw drive works but you need tons of discs) and a good burnign program like nero (nero is the best and worth the money btw). Then take the data you want and burn it to the disc, this way you have a physical copy of it incase you want it later.

The better option if your hard drive is at least 40gb and you dont use all of it is to install windows on a small partition of 15mb (you wont ever use more thn that easily) and make another partition and make it about 25gb. Install everything to the windows partition , but anything you wanna save put in the other partition. It works just like a folder, and its still the same hard drive but its been split into x sizes-just like a pizza pie can be split.

This way if you have to format windows you only lose what you installed and windows itself but not your important data.

Next dont ever use internet explorer or aol again, download opera or firefox, they work much better and arent suceptible to almost all spyware and adware unlike IE is.

As far as what to do:
There are 2 kinds of restores:
1. System restore. The kind that is furnished and built into prebuilt pc's hard drives. This kind sets your pooter back to the factory settings and wipes the hard disk. It will remove all your data!

Some of these simply repair windows, thus your data is safe or should be, I never trust them b/c eventually some traces of whatever caused the issue are still thier and it does it again.

2. A restore point. This sets it back to an earlier date where thier were no problems. You will lose any data that was accumulated since then. Honestly a waste of time as it may work but not always, I turn it off on all my pooters.

Now a reformat is different, it does wipe your disk-but it means you manually have to install windows with the cd and install everything else. I prefer this one b/c it removes everything imaginable and you start from scratch. Good idea to backup your crucial data before this as it wipes the hard disk clean.

One last word of advice-find someone who is reputable and builds pooters for aliving and throw the dell away if possible. A custom built pc is much cheaper, uses much better parts and thus will last longer. At the time buy top of the line or close to it-it will last much longer with the technology being release.

Right now the pc I am typing this on was top of the line a year or so ago. It only cost me about 1200 (and I was finicky about certain parts, about 1k woulda done it for most) and rivaled dells top of the line that cost almost 4k...

ldivinag

when did symantec and mcafee merge?

FWIW, a looooong time ago, i did get to meet (or glance at, MR MCAFEE when i visited their offices in santa clara, ca; back in the early 90s...)