Help Please!!!!

Ok, this is getting really weird. If you read this thread You can get an idea of what was happening before.



..ok..


so..


I formatted the hard drive. Figured a good clean sweep should help. I went thru with everything, it started up perfectly. But.. I couldnt get my Verizon disc to finish loading. It kept saying "unable to finish setup. Call technical support". After talking to them, and them checking the lines, they said all was fine. Probably needed to finish install during the daytime, or go to this link he sent me to. Thats when I realized that I didnt neccesarily need the Verizon thing. IE worked without it, so it wasnt a pressing issue. But thats when things started getting weird.

The system started freezing up. The first place I went to was windows update, so I could get the service packs and spyware program (works nicely, btw). Well, I got to the page and it started to check my system, and it locked up. I rebooted and went thru IE again, same results. When it wanted to start scanning my system, the thing locked up. A few reboots later, I go to PC Pitstop and run the tests. It locked up the first time, but the second time it ran fine. Heres the thing: I got the same results as I did when I tested it, before formatting the drive. Everything running at 30% capacity, but only flagged as a "minor problem". No spyware or viruses were detected, which leads me to believe that this is a setting problem or something. The previous test results are posted on the link at the begining of this post.

I was able to get the Yahoo spyware scanner (which is also pretty awesome). That was a 6mb download that took me 9 minutes with DSL. The test, which usually takes about 5 minutes to run, took about 20 minutes, yet again, nothing was found.

Now heres the really weird part. About 2 years ago when me and the misses moved in together, she brought with her this Dell I am on now. It came complete with 43 critical updates waiting for me and the Sasser worm. I fought with this thing for about a month. I couldnt stay on longer then 5 minutes with out this little box popping up and telling me that my computer was shutting down in 59..58..57.. At the time I didnt know that it was a virus. I thought it was a setting or something, so I fought it for a bit. After a while someone told me about sasser, and low and behold, I had it. I took it in to a shop and told him to clean sweep it. I got it back and all was well untill recently (see previous thread). But now, since formatting....that little countdown box has reappeared about 6 times or so. Also, some error boxes pop up from time to time, telling me that its shutting down because something cant be read. I cant access my task manager at all. I can press it when it first boots up, and I can see it for about 1/1000 of a second, then its gone, and wont come back up.

When I formatted this, I think I just "repaired" my installed version of windows allready. It says I have 8 mb of unpartioned space on the drive. I almost deleted the partition that windows was on, but it warned me that " deleting the partition may delete the command to boot from cd drive, which means you cant boot untill windows completes the install. The cd is in when I get that warning, but Im nervous that its not going to boot up, if I press that button.

So after all that, these are my questions:

When formatting, should I delete the partion that windows is on?

If not, then how do I go about performing a clean sweep of this thing?

Would throwing in another stick of 256 do anygood? (not in general, but towards the situation.)

Is there something I'm not doing right? I dont know. I would describe my knowledge of pc's at medium. I dont know code, but I'm not illiterate, either. Someone give me a shout, or at least an applause since it didnt lock up or freeze during the making of this post. If you need more details, let me know.

[edit on 28-12-2005 by spliff4020]

another 3am posting, so....***bump***

one more bump....


anyone have ANY ideas?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm,

As for the system haulting during the test, maybe you've got some drivers, windows update drivers that have been loaded, that causes a poblem, try going to your motherboard manufacturer website, check your board numbers against the websites updates/drivers section.

Maybe DirectX needs to be updated for the latest software???
I had soundcards that would lock things up because Direct X wasnt high enough.

As for the partition,
if your sure you've BACKED UP all your data, Ie burnt everything to a CD, or another harddrive, then delete the partition. Its the best way to ensure the harddrive starts off fresh.

As long as you can boot from the XP CD, it doest really matter whats on the HDD, it will always boot up, into the windows setup, as if you'd just bought a blank new pc.

windows doest control how the computer starts up, thats the bios. its difficult to mess that up. So remove and create partitions at your free will, have you used the FDISK command in msdos before?

.. something cant be read?.. is that the wording in the error message?
The only thing i could think of would be the HDD, but its odd that windows is warning you of the hdd temp. Does the HDD tick softly but constantly?
is it hot to touch?

maybe your CPU is heating up, is the fan on the motherboard working?
Take some screen shots of the error message.. printscreen button then open up paint and paste it... ( sorry dont know if you know this stuff or not )

do the same with the taskmanager, processes section..
paste them..

... lets us know eh?

Sorry it took so long to reply. I took it in to get formatted. I bought a stick of 256 and now Im at 512. All should be good, right? Nope.

System runs fine and stable, but being on the net maxes it out again. WTF IS GOING ON??? As soon as I load a movie, its maxed. PcPitstop says all is fine, except a "minor" problem with my processor. As Im typing this, its maxed out. When Im not online, it stays at about 5-10% usage. Go online, its 100% for the most part.




good reading...


now online,





system is stable. No crashes or freezes. So slooooooww net now. Think its a setting?