Sampson

While this: http://www.compatdb.org/ubbthreads.php/ubb/showflat/Number/179537/page/1 refers to Windows 2000, the patch might help for XP as well.

Or, since Microsoft is going to "require" you to download or update to IE 7 if you are running XP in February (or at least that is what is being bandied about), you may just have to put it right back on your system again even if you remove it. If you like the Triton engine that IE is based on, you could try TheWorld Browser as an alternative to IE: http://www.ioage.com/en/index.htm . At least it seems to be pretty stable, works well with memory, and you can update your system with it through WindowsUpdate.

There are some many things that this can be - from video drivers to memory to spyware. So, has this only recently happened to IE7 or has it always exhibited this behavior? Do you have another browser installed on your machine like Firefox or Opera? Do they exhibit the same behavior? You can look at the processes your machine is running by holding down Ctrl-Shift-ESC together. First, count the number of processes then see if you see something running that may seem out of place. Download something like Ad-Aware or Spybot Search and Destroy to find spyware on your machine that may be trying to intercept the links you are clicking. And, you might report on how much ram is on your machine (when running several applications IE can be a hog).

Hate to jump in where Danleff left off, but to allay your doubts, your system will work with the new card. Do not sweat the number of PCI slots. What may be unusual is that this card requires auxilliary power. Most AGP cards draw their power from the AGP bus, but this card needs a little more power from the power supply directly. The cable will be included with the card, but read the instructions when you install the card so that you attach the auxilliary power cable properly. It goes without saying that you will want to eliminate the drivers for your old card before installing the new card.

As DosFreak points out, it could be one of the three things he suggests. It may also be a question of heat. After you run the memory test and make sure that your bios is the latest and it still does what it does, just remove a panel from the computer to allow more air to circulate. If it keeps running after an hour, you may need a few extra fans.

Vista is a puzzle even when it seems to be working correctly on networks. But, it may not be Vista. Since you are using Vonage, I presume you are using a DSL/Cable Modem. If your computer is going through a router and is not hooked directly to the modem, it may be that you will need to set the router to the same MAC address as your computer's MAC address.

Also, you might think about exporting old emails and copying them to a CD, then deleting them and compacting the folders. You could also reduce the cache on IE or the browser that you use. Myke's suggestion is a good one, but you might also want to look at CC cleaner to get a lot of temporary files out of your system. Be careful what you want removed. Deleting some things like cookies may cause you to have to fill out passwords, etc for some webpages.

There are several things you may need to do. Power down your computer. Remove your new card. Bring up windows. If windows stays up and is stable, go to Control Panel Add/Remove Programs and remove all of the drivers for your Radeon. In addition remove any drivers for your onboard video. This should set your driver to a Standard VGA. It might ask you to install software for the new hardware it has found when you get back to your desktop. Don't. Just power down again. Put in your new card. When the computer starts up get into the BIOS (hit Del or F2). Go to the video portion of the BIOS and tell it not to use the onboard video as the default. Press F10 to save the configuration in Bios. Let windows come up. It should find your new card. Install your drivers from the CD that the card came with or the most recent drivers you downloaded from ATI.

Usually, there is a problem in the index file for the history folder when this occurs. Look at this page: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/iehv.html to get a better idea and some software to look at the problem.

Well, you are probably correct that it is spam or a forward to your address from someone's infected computer. This is a technique used by some to "scare" you into responding so that the spammer/bot knows that this is a valid address.

Is a motherboard that is three years old subject to failure? Of course, any motherboard subjected to excessive heat or overclocked or hit by a spike in electricity will eventually degrade and fail even if it is not three years old. Again, since you can put in another hard drive and bring windows up after formatting it doesn't really help to diagnose the problem. You might try doing that, get into windows and use a memory diagnostic program to see if the memory modules are not giving you the trouble. You could open the case and let more air in to see if heat is a problem, which, in turn, would allow you to see how the various fans are working. It just seems to me that you would do better to take the machine to a reputable repairman who has the equipment to test the various components individually and would put it on the bench and stress it to see what is breaking down.

There are any number of things that can be the problem. Since this is an intermittant problem, you could have some memory modules that have finally gone bad, or, depending on the age of motherboard, it too could have a short. Then, again, there could be a driver conflict. There is really no way to know this without breaking down the unit. Since you can't get into Windows to run any kind of diagnostics, you might have to take it to a reputable repair shop.

You might try going to Toshiba's site: http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/su_sc_modSel.jsp?moid=0&rpn=&hideModName=true&BV_SessionID=@@@@2025997933.1183554682@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccciaddlgelekdjcgfkceghdgngdgmm.0 Choose the drivers you need. It is a start.

Sometimes the difference is the amount of ram available. The major difference will be the refresh rate and the timing settings you assign in Bios. This page might help explain that: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ComputingSolutions/0,,30_288_13265_13295%5E13335,00.html Having said that, when two different sets of memory at different refresh rates and timing run together, the computer will always use the lower settings. Now, having said that, adding ram allows your computer to "breath" better meaning that if Windows recognizes the extra memory, it will not cache to disk so often, and multiple applications running simultaneously behave better. If this is what is meant by performance, you will have better performance and perhaps a slight speed tweak because it doesn't have to swap memory. There are two further considerations in relation to speed, if that is what you are after especially in relation to games. The first is a faster rated processor with a larger onboard cache and the second is the video card with faster throughput and a large amount of memory (depending on the game). More often than not, upgrading both of those items (and this depends on the motherboard) will increase your speed. You can increase the front side bus (but on a Dell this is not advisable) and you can dig some extra speed out of the processor. However, you will run the machine hotter, and the life of the system as a whole will decrease. In short, putting more ram in your system is a good performance upgrade (be sure of the timings given for the new ram), but it will not always yeild a visible speed increase.

Take out the new video card; boot up your computer. When Windows comes up: Right click on MyComputer and select Properties from the pull down menu, then click on the Hardware tab and then the Device Manager button. From the many devices you will see in a list, click on the "+" sign next to the Display Adapter. This will tell you what Video card you have. It also might indicate if it is onboard video. Depending on your motherboard, your video might be on the motherboard rather than on a separate video card. Exit the Device Manager, go into Control Panel then Add/Remove software and delete the drivers for your video. Exit control panel; it will probably tell you it has found a new device and want to install the drivers for it. Cancel and shut down the computer. While down, remove the old video card and put in the new one. If it is onboard video, put in your new card, then - turn on the machine and as it attempts to reboot, you will have to get into the BIOS (the screen will say hit DEL button or F2 or some keyboard key to do this). Look at your options and find the video section. Make sure that onboard video is cancelled or diasallowed. Write the changes to the BIOS (usually F9) then let it boot. When windows comes up, the screen should be running under standard VGA (and it will usually looke washed out. You may even be prompted that Windows finds new hardware and wants to install the driver. Don't let it. Put the CD that came with the video card in and install the drivers from it.

It sounds like you have a serious registry problem. The answer to your question is "no, you do not have to buy a new computer." Howeever, at this point you most probably will need to pull out your Windows XP CD and clean install XP onto the hard drive and start all over. If you can, backup your data. After this, if need be, get into your BIOS and set the machine to boot from your CD. Then, put your XP disk into the CD drive and clean install it. Be advised that this will destroy everything on your computer and once it does reboot and come up, you will have to download all the Microsoft fixes for XP, and any software programs that you use will likewise need to be re-installed. Given the software that you mentioned, it is best not to mix McAfee and Norton. Both liberally substitute .dll's and modify your registry unconscionably. Having said that, it is your own personal behavior apparently on the web that caused you to turn to software solutions to either protect your machine from viruses, trojans and the like or to bail you out afterward once infected. If you feel you can't break your habit of surfing areas that make your computer vulnerable after you have installed your security software like Zone Alarm, get a copy of Deep Freeze and put it on your machine. Installing it will allow you to return your machine to the way you had it configured after each reboot if it starts acting up.

Actually, there is no way to stop this pop-up. It is based upon a counter that is not even reset even if you have only just compacted the OE database. So, it is an annoyance, but one that is not terribly intrusive.

I am only guessing because it is certainly possible for something that was supposed to install at boot-time is clogging things up, but it sounds llke your hard disk may have gone south.

You might look at two things. Bring up your Event Viewer (Settings-Control Panel-Administrative Tools) and check to see if there are any error messages and what process is doing it. Then, right click on My Computer, Properties, and Select Hardware tab and see if the drivers that are installed are the correct ones for your Hardware.

I have seen this error come up when someone tries to dual boot a computer and the parameters are written incorrectly in the boot.ini, otherwise, it usually is a hard disk problem.

You are probably correct in that there is some driver or service which will not allow Shutdown to go further. You could download this from Microsoft: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/detai...;displaylang=en to help clean up the hives in the registry that would allow for a clean shutdown.

Right click on the Internet Explorer Icon, choose Properties, then select Privacy tab. Generally, the slider bar is set to Medium. Lowering this from the slider bar will allow for more cookies to be received in theory.

Unless you recall using a clean-up tool or some other utility that may have deleted this file, more than likely your hard drive has failed.

Which Media Player are you using? Which operating system are you using it under?

I do not work with SCSI drives any more, but it sounds like you need to implement a Raid scheme. In your case Raid 1. Raid 5 would require three hard drives minimum and I am not sure about the SCSI spec for this since each drive ID has to be different for SCSI to recognize parallel usage. In any case, I think you would need a third party product add-in to accomplish cluster storage. You might look at this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/237853