Ouch!
08-24-2006, 11:23 PM
First off, as far as the structure and workings of a computer, I'm a novice.
Alright, this has been a long time coming. Honestly, I don't know what the heck is wrong. I have a number of different spyware and virus protection programs that I keep updated. None of these have recognized any viruses on my computer or anything else of the sort. Despite that, my computer has become slower and slower. I've heard that this can be due in part to my harddrive running out of space.
My first reaction, of course, was to remove unnecessary programs and files from my harddrive to make space. I did this, freeing up at at least 10G in the process. It didn't help much. I tried to defrag my computer, and that didn't help much either.
I've been having problems updating windows as well. For the past few weeks, every time I try, it tells me that my computer is in an "unstable condition" and that I should remove my Microsoft Service Pack through add/remove hardware. This sounded like a generally bad idea, but today I finally gave in and did just that. As it turns out, it was a bad idea. Now many of my programs don't run properly. For example: windows media player now refuses to open. When I scroll in Firefox, it doesn't scroll smoothly and instead jumps down the screen in little interupted spurts.
Now I'm preparing to resort to the last option that has been suggested to me: wiping my harddrive and reinstalling windows. I've already saved the files I really don't want to lose (mostly word documents, music, and videos). I just have a few questions.
First: should I worry about the internet failing when I wipe my harddrive? Our router is hooked up to my computer, and it's my computer where we can access all the options for it. I've talked to my old man and he has no idea if it will do anything, but he thinks that the router will continue to wirelessly provide internet to the other computers.
Second: if it does, will copying the various folders from my program files on my local disc drive and pasting them into the program files once I've got my computer running again work, or would I have to reinstall everything?
Third: how the hell would I actually go about wiping my hard drive properly? I'm really at a complete and total loss.
Fourth: considering how much of a novice I am, is it probably better to just take it back to Dell (shudder) and have them take a look at it? I'm pretty sure my warranty on it is still good.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Alright, this has been a long time coming. Honestly, I don't know what the heck is wrong. I have a number of different spyware and virus protection programs that I keep updated. None of these have recognized any viruses on my computer or anything else of the sort. Despite that, my computer has become slower and slower. I've heard that this can be due in part to my harddrive running out of space.
My first reaction, of course, was to remove unnecessary programs and files from my harddrive to make space. I did this, freeing up at at least 10G in the process. It didn't help much. I tried to defrag my computer, and that didn't help much either.
I've been having problems updating windows as well. For the past few weeks, every time I try, it tells me that my computer is in an "unstable condition" and that I should remove my Microsoft Service Pack through add/remove hardware. This sounded like a generally bad idea, but today I finally gave in and did just that. As it turns out, it was a bad idea. Now many of my programs don't run properly. For example: windows media player now refuses to open. When I scroll in Firefox, it doesn't scroll smoothly and instead jumps down the screen in little interupted spurts.
Now I'm preparing to resort to the last option that has been suggested to me: wiping my harddrive and reinstalling windows. I've already saved the files I really don't want to lose (mostly word documents, music, and videos). I just have a few questions.
First: should I worry about the internet failing when I wipe my harddrive? Our router is hooked up to my computer, and it's my computer where we can access all the options for it. I've talked to my old man and he has no idea if it will do anything, but he thinks that the router will continue to wirelessly provide internet to the other computers.
Second: if it does, will copying the various folders from my program files on my local disc drive and pasting them into the program files once I've got my computer running again work, or would I have to reinstall everything?
Third: how the hell would I actually go about wiping my hard drive properly? I'm really at a complete and total loss.
Fourth: considering how much of a novice I am, is it probably better to just take it back to Dell (shudder) and have them take a look at it? I'm pretty sure my warranty on it is still good.
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.