Sampson

This is what Microsoft advises though you seem to have already done much of this yourself: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;875355

Spontaneous reboots are not always as spontaneous as they seem. When exactly does this happen. One fellow could work on his machine for hours using the software on his hard drive and not experience any problem until he went onto the net. Turns our he had not installed java. Another had been experimenting with overclocking (claimed he only did it twice). Turns out the chip had overheated and the cooling fan had to be reseated. One fellow was using "experimental" graphic drivers. His machine would reboot at the oddest times. Memory chips are most often the culprit. Heat and factory defects will cause certain addresses to fail. There are several software programs that could check this. Maybe, if you could give us some more extensive information, particularly when this first started happening. What is the motherboard - what bios is it using? What specific grafics card - the version of the driver. Does hie crash everytime you use a specific program?

A word to the wise. Take Windows update with a grain of salt. While most security updates will work fine, anything having to do with drivers ought to be avoided. HP and Dell do not use "generic" drivers even though their hardware components do come from companies that have "generic" drivers. In this case because it is a laptop, I would go to HP/Compaq's support page and see what I could find. There are just too many permutations to consider as to what caused this crash. Unless you just want to try to find a way to restore the system for the fun of it, bite the bullet, get out the crash disk that came with the computer, and clean install the system. Laptops are not like desktops. If the machine still acts funny, it means you have a hardware failure.

Download BHODemon: http://pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,23611,00.asp (if you already haven't) Install it and run it. Get rid of browser helpers that you do not recognize. Don't worry about Acrobat or Google toolbars. The suspicious file seems to be avmon.exe Then, download Mozilla Firefox and start using it as your browser to surf with. It is not as susceptible as IE.

Ad-Aware probably removed some values from the registry. Reinstalling W2k did not restore the registry but retained the old one. Perhaps, you could go back to a restore point prior to the ad-aware intervention.

Actually, this may be referring to DirectX. Click on Run then type dxdiag . Look at the tabs and click on Display. You can disable the hardware acceleration there. On the other hand, depending on your video card, a different set of drivers might do the same thing.

You will need to help us out a little with some more information. Why don't you list the computer you are using (name of computer type and number, for example Compaq Presario 4414), the sound card you have (if it is an onboard card or an add-in), the program you brought up to listen to the music (winamp, real, windows media player).

It may be that you are paging out of memory. How much RAM do you have for that machine?

Look at this page to see if it helps remove the Norton's firewall: http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/nip...tion=5&Src=

See if this page will help: http://uis.georgetown.edu/software/documentation/winxp/winxp.restore.html

adamvjackson's advice is dead on. It is a huge download. A smaller download will be trucked out tomorrow from Microsoft for those machines that have kept automatic update open on their machines. In either case there are some support tools that you can download for it. It can be downloaded from MajorGeeks: http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4331.html

And, you might want to do a find on MSVCRT.DLL since it sometimes gets buried in subdirectories of different applications and is defaulted to when that application runs. Netscape used to be notorious for doing this.

My guess is that your anti-virus or firewall has changed some port settings on you. Or, it could be that your mailserver is down. In either case read what Microsoft says: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;q191687

Clutch may be right. DSL is often dependent on how far your home is from a substation and the "noise" across telephone lines. Still, you should get a higher transfer rate than that; perhaps, as much as three times higher. Does your Dad's machine measure the same in his transfer rates? Since he has an ethernet card, I am interested in seeing if the transfer rate is being affected by the connection between the ethernet output on the router connected to your USB port. The price of an ethernet card is anything from $10.00-$25.00 USD. You can find them cheaper if you search.

Batchrun is a free program that makes running batches pretty easy. It is made by the same company that puts our cacheman. This is the address: http://www.outertech.com/index.php?_charisma_page=product&id=1 See if it will do what you want.

The MSVCRT.dll error is one of those ubiquitous ones that used to occur with a lot of frequency because certain programs installed over the latest Microsoft version of the dll and replaced it with one that was compatible with the software that was being installed. Try here http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downl...ies/Default.asp to reload the libraries.

ScinteX gave an excellent run down on what to check. But, to be honest, your processor is slow comparatively and the MX card is outdated. The enemy of all computers is heat. It does take its toll. Things are going to slow down on these machines. Further, despite the best of care, it seems that some kind of "dry rot" sets into the OS. With a lot of installs, the registry gets bigger and entries are left in that need to be removed. Nvidia drivers that are supposed to be removed aren't. Sometimes the only thing to do is a clean install.

Misunderstood what you wanted. This software is shareware but you get a 30 day trial. It will find all the open ports on your system: http://www.diamondcs.com.au/portexplorer/

Stardock has a bunch of things that change cursors, icons and so forth. Try looking here: http://www.soft14.com/Desktop_Enhancements/Fonts_Icons_and_Cursors/CursorXP_4075_Review.html

Why do you have an ethernet to USB connection to your computer? I know the easy answer is that your computer doesn't have an ethernet card. Does your Dad's laptop show the same problem in downloading since his is a straight ethernet connection. Actually, the router doesn't split the signal into halves. It is a time sharing thing. It maximizes throughput based upon usage. Most of the time you should get more than half. If you connect the DSL modem up to your computer directly (most of them have both USB/ethernet connections) do you have the same problem? If you hook your DSL modem up to your Dad's computer directly, does it do the same as yours? The firewall you are speaking of - is it Microsoft's? If it isn't, you do have to configure it to give an IP address to get out to the internet. Anyway, after all of these musings, if it were me, I would slap an ethernet card into your machine and hook this to the Router. Behind a router, you are relatively safe from random pingings, so I would disable the firewall to see if I could download a little faster. I would then go to DSL reports - http://www.dslreports.com/ and choose from the menu on the left the Tests and Tools to have it analyze through its Tweak Test to see if you have your Windows is really set up for broadband.

If you are worried about open ports (and not all of them are able to be closed, go to this page: http://www.pivx.com/qwikfix.asp . This software was produced to close those ports and other vulnerabilities that have been used by hackers and worms.

This sort of depends on whether you are using XP Home or Pro. Generally, both setup a "Workgroup" XP Pro does so by default, XP Home can be hit or miss. Assuming that you have the default Workgroup set up, and assuming that if XP Home is defaulted to Simple file sharing, bring up Windows Explorer. It generally defaults to My Documents, click on the "+" next to My Computer and then click on the "+" next to C local drive. Generally under Documents and settings, you will see a folder called Shared Documents. Actually, you can create your own Folder if you like. If you find a Shared Documents folder with a little hand beside it, it means that that folder will be seen by any computer on your network. If there is no little hand, then right click on the folder and choose Sharing and Security from the menu. If you are using XP Home don't use the Wizard since Microsoft wants to turn on the Firewall which is a real headache when you are first learning to do this. Filling in the blanks are pretty straight forward.

The Bios is that bit of code in a rom in your computer that identifies peripherals for it. Whenever you boot your computer, you will see a message like Hit DEL or F1 to enter the Bios. Since flashing the Bios is a major heart attack on a stick, you can go to the webpage of your computer maker and look up the latest BIOS for it. If it is the same as in yours (when that message to press a particular button comes up it will say what your Bios is; it might F4 or 2.3 or some such.) Many times items will come out after your computer is on the market and a new Bios is created to "upgrade" the computer to be able to handle it. To check the DMA go to the My Computer icon and right click, choose properties, click on the Hardware tab, then the Device Manager button. A screen comes up and look for the Icon with the word IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers written next to it. Click on the "+" sign and you should see a primary and secondary IDE. Right click first on the Primary and choose properties and go to Advanced and make sure that DMA is available or requested. Do the same for the Secondary IDE. If your DVD had only PIO support, it needs the full DMA to burn Disks. It might ask you to reboot when you reset these values.

Reading back over this, if your Bios can accept the burner, did you make sure that it has DMA support?

Does your Bios support this device?