Troubles, Troubles, Troubles

[Lloyd]

First, I have been reading the replies and feel they are outstanding and hope someone can help....
About a week ago I attempted a restore on my Dell 8200. Its about 3 years old. After restoring to an earlier date, my wife needed a file that was from an earlier date, I went directly to the other date. Since then I have had nothing but issues. I thought it was the hard drive, so I installed a new one, loaded XP Home and its taking several, several minutes to start. Once it starts, it takes, no joke, three and four minutes to open whatever I have clicked on.
I have unplugged and restarted. I have unplugged and reinstalled cards. I have attempted to reinstall XP and it took two days to install. NO JOKE.
39 minutes turned into days. I now sit with the CPU open and I need another suggestion. Please help....

Thanks

[LadyGrey]

Hi Lloyd and welcome to the PC Guide,
First thing any of the gurus will want are all the facts about your computer. What Operating System is it running, XP, W2K, 98? They will need to know why you attempted to do a restore in the first place. Was the computer already slow, was it not booting up? Were you getting error messages, are you running an anti-virus program and firewall? They will really need the low down on exactly what you have and what has gone wrong before they can help.
All the information you have will help.
LG

[Ajmukon]

with what service pack. and a Hijack this log may be helpful

[Lloyd]

Good mornning LG,
Many answers....I am runninig XP Home and a firewall. I have 500 mgs of ram in two 250 cards. I have not had any problems with viruses in the past.
I had installed some kodac picture software and deleted one one the accounts. After I completed that task, I found out that some files were attatched to the account that I deleted, that was the reason for the restore. While I was restoring my wife ask that I make sure that I went back a couple more days to insure that everything came back. First mistake listening to my wife LOL. I completed a restore and before saving and coming out completely, I immediately went to the earlier date. The system appeared to have accepted that date and was running normal, but when I restarted, it locked up at windows. It finally came up, but everthing was turtle slow. I talked to a friend of mine that works with computers and do trust him and he thought that I was having a hard drive issue. So I bought a new HD and installed XP Home back on it. That took days to complete,and it is still running extremely slow and freezing. Last night when I tried to install the printer, it finally just quick the install proccess. Also It will not let me run a diagnostic test. There is not a choice listed in setup or reboot. I have looked and looked for a way to run and test and there is none that I can find. The four lights in the back are all green, so there is no indication that there is a problem.
Lots of info, hope I hit everything you need

[Sylvander]

To check that there's nothing wrong with the hardware...
Run a Linux distro from a live CD [like Ubuntu or Knoppix].
If that loads and runs just fine, then there's almost certainly nothing amiss with the hardware [HDD excluded].

[saphalline]

Weird. Almost sounds like overheating and/or corrupted CMOS data.

Any dust in that system? Has the CMOS battery ever been replaced?

[LadyGrey]

Maybe PSU on the way out?

If you do finally get it going don't install all of that Kodak software, total mess and I speak from experience. I just use the camera and printer drivers from it and that's all. Then use a third party picture editor to play around with your pictures.

Maybe using the manufacturers utilities to zero and format the drive would help to get a clean install?
I would be sure about the overheating, dust and so forth first though, simple is better!
Maybe Dell has a BIOS update?
LG

[bassman]

I definitely gotta agree with Saph on this. Sounds like heat to me, but after a re-read of all of this I thought to myself "Don't Dells have proprietary drivers"? Was your new install done with factory disks or another version of XP?
The issue of jumping around and not fully proceeding with a restore may have caused some loss of or damage to data therefore causing the initial slow downs. Now with the R-n-R of hardware, I would be concerned with whether or not your CPU fan is working. Possibly knocked a connector loose or ESD. Check your fan and let us know, along with all the other questions

[Lloyd]

Hey everyone,
Thanks for all the input, It was a great help.
We depended on the puter so much, we could not have it down, so we bought another one.
To follow up though, the fan was working ok and it never felt hot when I opened it up, SOOOOO Who knows.


For sell....A dell 8200 Brand new hard drive. Comes with lots of extra software. Great for someone with nothing to do for hours.....LOLOLOLOLOL

Thanks again yall

[hypergod]

Check the HDD settings in BIOS for UDMA, enable if it is a IDE HDD. Check for any throjans ... these damn things slow down comp. very much.

Good luck

[Fruss Tray Ted]

So I bought a new HD and installed XP Home back on it. That took days to complete

Definitely a clue within... Yes, check for UDMA, also if it was a large drive and the restore disk may not have large volume support, etc. But the main spot to focus on is why it took s-o-o long to load Windows on a new drive. An hour tops is all you should be looking at.

Also check for problems with hardware such as RAM and possibly other core hardware such as optical and floppy drives. When installing Windows, do not have any printers, faxes etc connected as well. Get a base unit working first and tested, then install peripherals one at a time with reboots in between just to be on the safe side.