Computer problems

[DANGERMAN]

I ended up staying up till it was all downloaded (watching Street Fighter on viva) and fell asleep pretty much as soon as it was shutting down to install them (all 69). Seems to be working ok now, I think it's still doing something, might be updating a driver or more windows stuff, but it's not hogging my computer.

I dont want to say it's fixed, but it's looking like it's fixed

[Sly Reflex]

When I did my PC there were well over 100 updates, and it took several if not more restatrts until everything was all present and correct. Time spent reformatting to factory standard? 10 minutes. Time updating to current standard, approx 6 hours.

[Cyberpunk]

I agree Sly. And then you have to run update 3 or 4 times, restarting every time, just to make sure it's all updated. Having said that though, I highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, their freebee anti-virus and anti-malware. It uses almost no system resources, unless you set a scan going, updates nicely, and doesn't block you games and stuff hitting the tinternet. And all you need to get it is a legal copy of windows.

[DANGERMAN]

yeah my computer's doing something at the minute, no idea what though. I was playing Footy Manager before, streaming the city v pool game, listening to music, and my browser and skype were open. All ran fine. The past few hours though it's been shit, I dont know if it's because it thinks im not doing much (browsing and listening to music) so nows a good time, but its constantly finding updates. There was the 69 last night, and I'd say there's been about 20 today, plus whatever its doing now.

I had problems copying all my music back on too. Windows didnt want me to access my music folder, only the public one, then it hid it all from my media players for some reason and made my FLAC files FLA files so they wouldnt play I think that's sorted now.

It's all a pain in the arse though, at the minute it's not actually any faster than before with all the downloads

[Cyberpunk]

What OS are you running Ben?

[DANGERMAN]

Vista Home Premium (though I cant do that fancy open window spinning thing). Went to bed last night and it was installing 6 updates. Turned on this morning and there's another 2.

Surely MS could find a better way of doing this, maybe by making a complete update every 6 months or something that's the first thing you get?

[Cyberpunk]

Did you install the service packs after the last restore? I find it's better to download these for offline installation before doing an update.

BTW Software For Students will let you have a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade disc for £39.95. You need someone you know to be in education, and to type in the name of a school.

[Jimboxy]

Did you install the service packs after the last restore? I find it's better to download these for offline installation before doing an update.

BTW Software For Students will let you have a Windows 7 Professional Upgrade disc for £39.95. You need someone you know to be in education, and to type in the name of a school.

ohhh i might do this. Whats the difference between Upgrade and the normal one?

i.e can i use it do to a format / clean install or can i only upgrade?

[Cyberpunk]

ohhh i might do this. Whats the difference between Upgrade and the normal one?

i.e can i use it do to a format / clean install or can i only upgrade?

You can upgrade Windows Vista with it. You need to format & re-install with windows Xp. You can format & Re-install with both versions, but you'd have to put your old windows disc in at some point during the installation, so Windows 7 can verify it.

[Jimboxy]

my new-ish laptop didn't come with a windows disc, only a recovery partition. I looked at a blog telling you how to do it, sounds like a chore though TBH.

[spatular]

^ sort of similarly want to upgrade my vista basic to xp pro or something but reading up on it sounds well annoying, unclear if i'll bother. suddenly not being able to run iis properly has become a problem.

about the windows updates, if you leave it to its own devices it seems to be continually updating, i tend to let it warn me but do nothing, ignore it till they build up then do a load all in one go.

[DANGERMAN]

Marvelous, I downloaded Service Pack 1 (so that it would let me get SP2) and set about installing it. Unoftunately something ballsed up when it was reloading my computer and it failed to load. Now it wants me to do a system restore from my driver disk, which I dont have. Hopefully i can just restore to a point, the point where SP1 downloaded, or it'll just fix itself

The thing thats really getting to me is that I'm becoming less and less convinced my computer's actually fixed. It's seemed it a couple of times, but it's bottle necking constantly since yesterday afternoon. Hopefully that's due to the updates, but fuck me I wasn't expecting this to take so long

[DANGERMAN]

Sorry to keep going on about this, but it doesn't look like my computer is fixed at all.

I've emailed Dell but was wondering if any of you have any ideas. There's a blue light on the front of my machine that indicates the computer's busy, usually it just flickers, and in the past it would go solid if I was opening loads of stuff or doing something complicated. Now though it'll just go solid and even what I'm typing wont show up till it's worked through whatever the problem is. The fans are on a bit, not the full tornado you get at start up, but louder than it should be considering I'm not really doing anything. Obviously this could be a symptom rather than the cause, but have you lot got any ideas?

I cant really afford to but I'm thinking I might have to take it to a repair shop if you or Dell cant help me

[spatular]

I highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, their freebee anti-virus and anti-malware. It uses almost no system resources, unless you set a scan going, updates nicely, and doesn't block you games and stuff hitting the tinternet. And all you need to get it is a legal copy of windows.

i'd get rid of avast and give that a try. worth a go anyway.

[Jimboxy]

i think your best bet would be to do a complete clean re-install from a windows disc (not a dell recovery) just put the absolute basics on there and all the relevant updates, see what its like then. If you're still having problems after that, it might be a hardware issue rather than a software.

[DANGERMAN]

avast has already gone, I also dont have a windows disc (just the harddrive equivalent)

I've got an Auslogics thing thats supposed to clean up the registrary, I'll see if that has any luck

[spatular]

when you did the factory reset/restore thing - did it format the main hard drive partition?

did you have to re-install any drivers yourself or was it all automatic?

are the drivers up to date? - might be worth checking for new ones, usually pretty easy to find drivers on the dell site. or maybe ignore that, if it ran ok right after the factory reset it might not be useful, although computers are a bit mental so who knows.

sorry not sure any of this is much use, if the problems continue a big hammer is probably more useful.

[Hendo]

A rough un-educated guess, you might have picked up something really dodgy when the machine was downloading Windows updates and so the machine was vulnerable.

A mate used to tell me that an un-patched PC will be screwed over in about 15 minutes, on average.

[DANGERMAN]

I assume it did the full partition Spatular, it was quite quick but it did say it was formatting. Drivers should all be up to date too, I manually did everything on the device manager, and it did a couple itself.

As for the virus Hendo, I'm not sure, I've had 2 antiviruses so far and neither have spotted anything. Also the problem seems to be the same as before (maybe not, and I'm tempted to wipe it again to see if it was fine after the restore).

I'm starting to think it might be something in the registry. My problems all started when Opera and Avast updated a couple of weeks back, then I did a system restore. That could have created duplicates in the registry, which would explain why the problems have re-emerged as I've installed more programs

House is on in the background, can you tell?

[spatular]

I assume it did the full partition Spatular, it was quite quick but it did say it was formatting. Drivers should all be up to date too, I manually did everything on the device manager, and it did a couple itself.

cool, updating drivers is a pain in the ass. it'll just set the addressing part to say there's no data rather than actually wiping stuff, which is fine, and why it's quick. i'm all out of ideas for things that might fix it but if you're going to do the wipe/restore thing again it might be a good idea to make a new partition (anyone know any good/free software for this?) at the same time, then if you have to copy back your music/documents and stuff again, put them in the new partition, which only comes in useful if you need to do the wipe/restore thing again later you won't have to copy anything back (assuming this won't mess up the restore process?).

also i think the world is about to end as my works pc keeps failing to get to google.

edit - google is working again, apparently there's partitioning software built into vista:

http://www.theworldofoffice.com/windows-vista/are-you-looking-for-free-partition-software-for-vista/