crazy computer

[ufcrusher]

I am having trouble with a friend's computer. It's a Dell Inspiron 8100. 1 Ghz 256k running Windows XP Home. The problem is as follows:

Whenever a new program is installed it disappears.
Software starts to skip during installation phase and then it doesn't work properly.

The first problem that appeared was when WP9 kept giving error message that it had to shut down and did so. WP was uninstalled and problem persisted with screen disappearance. My friend was running no anti-virus software, through no fault of his own. It was supposed to be loaded, but was not.

My friend bought McAfee and attempted to load it, but although it appeared to load, McAfee would not start and icons to search paths to start were now missing or moved.

My friend was going to offload his files with a Zip disk IOMEGA and began to have same problems with screens disappearing or software not loading. So he could not use his zip drive.

Now my friends modem, which is reading as ok, is not responding. It doesnt matter whether you are using it in AOL (dont laugh) or as a dialer.

I have tried to do everything I can think of, but nothing so far has been successful. Any suggestions would be helpful.

Thanks.

UFCrusher

[Mpowered]

Use the "Restore Disk" Luke


Seriously though, if you are having so many problems he might just wany to blow away the whole install and start over. I do that about every 6 months anyway for windows machines.

[LPMiller]

format and use the restore disk. It sounds like a virus, though it also sounds like it could be overheating. Dell fans sorta fail alot.

[ufcrusher]

Well I tried to get him to let me restore his computer, but apparently he doesnt want to do that quite yet. The guy is admittedly not computer saavy, so I backed up all of his personal files for him onto a CDR. When he finally decides to do the restore, I will have him scan all of his files for viruses before reloading them.

Whatever it is, I couldnt figure it out for the life of me. With all the problems he was having, I even used a direct copy of Norton from a basically identical computer...figuring that if I forced in a copy that was not infected, I could find whatever was causing the problem. Of course, it didnt work....sometimes I hate these "newer" selective operating systems...in older systems that trick would have worked.

I am just hoping that when I copied the file from my system, I used a cross over cable for ease, that I didnt somehow open up my system to the virus. My system has actually just started acting up, but Norton (updated to Oct 30...the latest) says there is nothing here.