Upgrade update: Thanks for all your help and advice, everyone. I now have Windows XP and Mozilla Firefox, and the problems are solved (so far). Happy me.
Anya ,'Potential'
Buffistechnology 2: You Made Her So She Growls?
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Laptop update: Ordered it from Walmart on Friday, with 512 MB extra RAM from ZipZoomFly thanks to the advice and links. Total price $585.34 for Laptop incl. tax and shipping; $87 bucks for extra RAM. Laptop scheduled to arrive tomorrow and I will post my thoughts upon usage. BTW, on last check it was still available if anyone is looking for a brand new and cheap laptop.
Two happy endings in a row. Something must be askew.
Zenkitty - hopefully you have service pack 2 installed.
yes, something is STILL askew. here is my update.
okay, i did the Safe start mode...and it STILL did that starting over after 5 - 10 % of defrag. ack! it did finally run, and was much faster than it had been in the past... but why am i still getting that message of something had changed while it was doing the defrag?
also did attempted a scan disk and was getting a similar message:
that Windows or something cue spooky music was writing to the disk as it was being scanned.
it kept asking me if i still wanted to perform the scan disk b/c it had restarted 10 times. WTF?
so i gave up on the scan disk and have NO idea what is wrong with this drive. *thunk*
yeah, i guess i should just be happy that it mostly works. *g*
halfrek, if you do a CTRL-ALT-DEL, what programs does it show you have running?
grommit,
a friend of mine had serious problems with Service Pack 2. Any reason that should be installed?
Halfrek, you might have some spyware running. Or else something that logs to a file.
Make sure you've used and updated at least two spyware checkers. My reccommendations are spybot, spy sweeper, and of course Adaware.
a friend of mine had serious problems with Service Pack 2. Any reason that should be installed?
It's the easiest way of ensuring a years worth of security patches are installed. However, I'm using Windows 2000, so take my advice with a pinch of salt.
halfrek, my mother's computer has Windows ME and it's impossible for us to get it through ScanDisk on the first try. However, if you let it go long enough, it usually goes farther and farther and finally finishes.
dcp this is what i see:
explorer server save wkcalrem loadqm devldr16 systray flashksk wkdetect
when i try to endtask explorer it attempts to do so then it says it is not responding. so then i hit the endtask box that pops up... with all the done it is still there. *thunk*
Daniel C, eye = suck b/c i dont have a spyware checker. the desktop with the Me does not have access to the 'net right now. i will see if i can find a program to dl to disk on the laptop and try it on the desktop. thankfully my laptop has XP.
on another topic...does anyone know of good program to convert wmv.files to something that a Mac can read?
eta Dana, yeah i have done that in the past, but i wanted to put an end to the madness. *g*