Sampson

Since it seems that you have somekind of spyware that starts at your startup, you might try this program called assassin: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Assassin_d4794.html

I have no idea what "wxqwbwt" refers to. It may be spyware. Aim should be your AOL instant messenger. Ststem could be legitimate for possibly your sound system. If you will hold down CTRL-Shift-ESC buttons on your keyboard at the same time, it will bring up your task manager, then click on the tab that says Processes. This will tell you what you have running simultaneously. You can use Google to query what each of the processes represent. Those that are legitimate programs, you leave alone. Here is where you may detect spyware or viruses. You can kill that process. If you have downloaded MSConfig Cleanup, you can disable the program associated with that process from coming up on bootup.

"Backing up your data" - where you store the files you create from Word Processing or Spreadsheets or whatever you use on your computer depends upon you. However, most programs will put them by default in My Documents. You will want to burn a CD and copy these files to it or copy them to a floppy. "Crash disk" most notebooks come with a disk to restore the notebook to its original configuration. Some of these disks will simply reinstall Windows over your present installation on the hard disk. One of the options is "clean install". "Clean install" will reformat your hard drive and destroy everything on it and then install Windows. This will obliterate all your programs and data on the hard drive. You will then have to re-install all your programs and data. However, since you have found that there may be something running in the background at bootup, it may be that something (could be a virus or spyware program) is conflicting with somthing that should run from windows. Click on Run then type msconfig and this will bring up what is set to run in the background on bootup in Windows. Or you can download MSConfig cleanup from: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4642 and use it to find out what is running that shouldn't be and stop it. If you don't know what should be running or not running, put what you find in your next post and we'll try to help you eliminate what it is.

I know this is not what you want to hear, but chasing down stop codes is a pretty fruitless endeavor. If this has been happening to your machine from the beginning, you may have somekind of hardware screw up, but most often it comes from drivers that are not insynch with the hardware, particularly drivers from games. Your best bet is to back off all of your data, take out your Vaio crash disk and let it clean install your system again. Go to Microsoft and install all the security patches, but under no circumstances install any drivers for that machine. Sony and many notebooks will work only with the video drivers and even DVD drivers they alone supply. I know this is not the best "gotcha" solution, but a clean install will either work, or you will find out if you have a video, or a ram, or a CD problem.

There is a hidden file in your root directory called bootlog.txt . You will have change the attributes to see it. You can use a Dos window and issue the command attrib bootlog.txt -h . Then you can use any text editor to bring it up. Look through the file and find where each driver is called and which one "fails". That's the driver that needs to be replaced or updated.

Have you made any of your subdirectories shareable?

There are some other entries that can also speed up mozilla browsers. Any number of mozilla forums carry these tips. Essentially, what you are doing is allowing throughput to stream through without excessive error checking. Every packet sent and received carries a checksum value and if the values are the same from the transmitter to the receiver, that packet is ok'd. If it fails, then it is dropped and retransmitted. That's what the pipelining is for. It just allows a continuous stream without the breaks to check the packets. Works well on clean telephone lines and broadband in general. I have found, however, if you have a good broadband service provider, I really don't see much difference.

I live in Houston. The cameras and traffic lights remained on as long as there was power. What does it sound like when it is abandoned? Depending on where you stand - a hollow canyon to nothing at all. However, standing too long down there was a one way ticket to a Harris County holding cell. Most of the forceful winds were east of Houston so it wasn't particularly scary. But, during Alicia some years ago there was the additional sounds of glass breaking. Little pebbles were picked up by her and took out windows that were twenty and more stories up. Large panes were sucked out floated gracefully down and then smashed themselves on the street. Standing downtown at that point would get you a one way ticket to the morgue. The birds are fine. They didn't leave. What was nice, with everyone gone, was that you could get anywhere in minutes. The mess was on the highways. They couldn't get the contraflow working as quickly as they wanted. So, as traffic ground to a halt, the garbage accumulated. They were unbelievably messy. The gas stations and small stores look like landfills.

I like the layout.

Depending on what the error says, generally, it simply means that your mail server is down at verizon, or they have changed how they want you to address them. Go to their webpage and see if they are asking you to change server names or id's. Or simply email their support department to see if they are having server problems.

You might want to update your definitions. CCleaner advertizes that it has not spyware. In any case you could look at DustBuster: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/DustBuster/1015259842/1 as an alternative.

There are indeed. Two which come to mind are O&O defrag and Perfect Disk. O&O takes longer to defrag, but you are given numerous options as to how you want it to defrag. Perfect Disk is a speed demon. It defrags much more quickly, and it will sort out the hives in the registry. While Perfect Disk does not give you as many defragging options, its own method is thorough. O&O use to have a free defragger. I am not certain now if it free for a certain length of time. Perfect Disk has a free demo program. Both products are very reasonably priced. Either product is good.

Your post is somewhat unclear. Did you have a different operating system on this computer and upgrade it or did you clean install and put XP pro on? If you write click on My Computer from the Menu click on Properties, then click on the Hardware tab, then click on the Device Manager button, this will bring you to a screen and you should be able to see the CD. You can then explore the settings and determine if there is a conflict. Leaving aside how the CD is configured in BIOS as master or slave for the moment, you could delete this device and have Windows find the appropriate "driver" for your CD. Or you could optionally do this manually. There is another trick with the registry in clearing out values there. Off the top of my head I can't remember it, but if deleting the device and re-installing doesn't work, I will try to find it.

Sometimes this happens if the archive bit of the file has been changed. Actually, Windows Explorer does not see the file, it only reads the "index" of the file. The actual file might be damaged.

Simply copying or "moving" your Windows installation to the Sata drive won't work. For all intents and purposes, your present setup has Windows on drive c: your Sata drive would probably be e: since you have a slave drive which is probably d:. Windows would be confused, also, there is some hidden junk that straight copying won't pickup. I don't want to get into the long explanation about imaging or ghosting drives, but this could be done, but in any case your Sata drive would have to be configured as c:\ in any case. To make it simple, for the time being, I would make the Sata drive a place for your data. I would also configure Windows to use it as your cache drive and IE to store all of its caches cookies, etc.

You might look at Proces[censored]plorerNT by SysInternals

AGP slots should all be the same. In their first implementation, the AGP slot was brownish in color on the motherboard. The MX 4000 only comes in AGP I think. They even work with AGP 1.0 that emulates AGP 2.0. If the computer is halting when you put the card in a PCI slot, the machine is "shorting out." I presume that you are putting this card in for gaming. You could use a PCI card in that machine. Nvidia still makes PCI cards like the 5200 which would probably run a little faster than the MX 4000.

You will have to go through two steps. While the onboard graphics card is still defaulted in windows, you will have to change the driver from S3 to Standard VGA. It will want to reboot. As it is booting up, hit the key (it can be the DEL key, F10, or ESC every system has its own key) that will allow you to go into your BIOS. Once in the Bios default the graphics to AGP and if you can, disconnect the onboard graphics. Remember to Save the changes. When you come out of the Bios after saving the changes, turn the machine off. Put your Nvidia card in. Turn the machine on. This should allow windows to come up with the Standard VGA driver and you should be able to see the screen (remembering, of course, to have switched the cable to connect the new card to the monitor). Once windows is up, you can install the Nvidia drivers for your card.

I have used ERD Commander from Winternals.com successfully to retreive data from a machine whose hard disk was badly scrambled. It is a little pricey, but it worked. It even allowed us to get the damaged machine onto the network and copy the files from one machine to another.

I am not sure how long this board has been around. I would say it is a while, but it may have been updated. What you need to determine is the AGP version. The earlier boards were AGP 1.0 but could emulate 2.0. That is the spec you need to examine on your motherboard and your card. If your AGP version is 2X/4X, you should be good to go with that card. If not, you might consider an Nvidia card that can still be compatible with the old AGP. Otherwise you can use a PCI card that are still made by both Nvidia and ATI. Again, it all depends on the rating of your AGP slot.

Since Windows won't load, before playing with the memory stick, turn on the computer and as it first starts to boot, there should be a message to hit a particular button (DEL or F10) to get into the BIOS. Go into the Bios and find the entry that will let you boot from the CD Rom. Set it to boot from the CD and exit and save this. Put your Windows XP systems CD into the CD and let it boot from the CD where you will be given some choices to Repair, bring up the Console and Repair or boot into Safe Mode. I would first let it boot into Safe Mode. If Windows comes up, this sometimes is all you need to do since it is using the Standard Drivers. Exit, and remove the CD and Boot the computer as normal. If it comes up as normal, you are good to go. If it fails again; reboot from the CD, go through Safe Mode. I am only guessing, but the drivers for your video card may have been corrupted if Safe Mode is available. Be sure you have your CD with your video drivers or you can download a new set from Nvidia. Go to your control Panel and to Add/Remove Programs and Remove the Nvidia drivers. Then, reboot the computer, if it comes up normally, but looks pretty much like it did when you were in Safe Mode, then, reinstall your video drivers. Let us know if it will or will not go into Safe Mode.

In general, if a machine has been operating fine and begins having random freezes and you have not installed any new software or drivers, you have a hardware problem. It could be excessive heat and your processor is shutting down; it could be a bad memory module which could also be heat related; it could be your video card is not seated properly or is not getting sufficient ventilation. You didn't say whether after re-formatting your machine you installed all of the Windows updates. Norton's is peculiar about the updated version of Windows that is installed. However, my guess is that you have some bad memory.

Generally, when a computer freezes as you describe it, it is a driver problem. On the other hand, with it being a new HP, you don't know what she has installed on it that could be causing the problem that may not be a driver problem, but something else. Does it only freeze like this when she is browsing on the web or does it freeze up with while using her word processor also? What browser is she using? What "firewall" or anti-virus does she have installed? Did she install something from a webpage and she was fooled into putting something like comet cursor or gator on her machine? Does it freeze up everytime she goes to the same webpage? What kind of connection does she use to get to the internet? Has she updated windows since she got the computer? There are far too many questions to answer before something can be pinpointed.

Perhaps, you could look at this page: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docum...ocname=bph07246

You can try the program Msconfig cleanup found at Majorgeeks to see if you can let it dig out the Run programs group that you would have to go into the registry to delete: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4642