[Sammy7]

Hi

My computer is great when it comes to the Internet. However anytime I try to access anything through the start menu, it will take a long time to open. If I then try to get into my documents it will take about 5-10 mins to open, then will say not responding,, give it a minute or two and then it will work again.

If I want to switch between two windows that I have open at a time, the only way I can do so is to CTRL+ALT+DEL and click on the program, then switch to. Clicking on the bar on the bottom of the screen only causes the computer and programs to freeze.

I have recently had advice and quotes saying that I am going to have to pay around $300 aussie dollars to get all my photos and documents backed up,, have the computer wiped and everything reinstalled. I cannot afford this as I am a single mum!!! But at the same time do not want my photos of my kids permanatly stuck on the computer!!!
So I sat down this arvo to try and save all my photos onto a writable disk. After about half an hour of waiting for the programs to work and my computer to open,, i finally got the files ready to write to CD. When I began to try and write them, the computer brings up a wizard to help me write the files to disc, upon which it keeps telling me to insert a writeable disc. I have used these discs before and no they are writeable.

So I decided to forget the disc and try saving the photos to my memory stick, however the computer will not even recognize that it is connected!!

I have had a number of problems with this computer, it is a compaq presario running windows XP.
A few months back I had problems and did a system restore, not realising I performed a full system restore, losing one program of photos but not another,, any answers as to why this would happen??
Also flash player stopped working. I contacted adobe, who walked me through trying to fix it, In the end we had to create a new user account to get flash player to work, now I have one user acc that plays flash and one that doesnt. I cant wipe the one that doesnt as it holds all my photos and documents and i cant transfer them over!

I know this is a very long winded description but any help would be greatly appreciated as I cant afford the other options at this point in time!!!

Kindly

sammi

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Hello,
Lets see if it is an issue with your RAM.
Click this for a guide to using Memtest



Click this to download Memtest

Run it overnight if possible

[hfcg]

Hello,
Lets see if it is an issue with your RAM.
Click this for a guide to using Memtest



Click this to download Memtest

Run it overnight if possible

[hfcg]

I have recently had advice and quotes saying that I am going to have to pay around $300 aussie dollars to get all my photos and documents backed up,,

That is around $195.00 USD, way too much to slave the drive and burn the files to disc.
I would charge about $50.00 USD.
Do you have access to another machine that we can slave your drive to?

[Sammy7]

HI

Thanks for the quick response! This may sound like a dumb question, but im not too sure how to download the memtest? it gives me options to download to a USB or a floppy disk, but neither my usb ports or my CD drive are working at the moment. I would really like to run it tonight if possible , not to sure how though.

As for having access to another machine, unfortunately I dont, what does slave mean?? Sorry for my ignorance!!! Not too handy when it comes to computers,, know how to use them not too great on fixing them!!!



Sammi

[Mark D]

Have you been performing basic maintenance tasks? (disk clean up, disk de-frag & error checking?). If your system is fine on the internet but everything else is slow or not working, it could also be a build up of dust on the memory chips or the CPU heat sink is full of dust and cannot shed heat properly. The 1st thing I would do is run the routine maintenance and make sure defragmentation has been run, (note: if your drive has less than 15% free space, it will not be able to run).

System Restore will take your system back to a particular point of your machine's program setup. The reason one program disappeared is because it was installed after the restore point that you chose, (the other one was still there because it was installed before your restore point). It is useful to recover from viruses using System Restore, but if your want to repair the operating system, boot from the WindowsXP CD Rom. Follow the prompts to install WindowsXP. The installation program will look for existing WindowsXP installations. Ask it to repair the existing installation and it will load all the original WindowsXP operating system files that came with your system. Note that you have to have a valid Windows product activation code, (should be on a sticker on your system).

As far as transferring your documents between two profiles, open Windows Explorer, and click on DriveC - Documents and Settings. You will see several folders here, two of them will be the two profiles you are using. Click on the old profile and you will see the My Documents folder with your existing data. Copy that to your new profile. Note that if your profiles are password protected and you told the system to keep your files private, you will have to use that profile to access the files.

Hope this helps..

[Sammy7]

I have recently had advice and quotes saying that I am going to have to pay around $300 aussie dollars to get all my photos and documents backed up,,

That is around $195.00 USD, way too much to slave the drive and burn the files to disc.
I would charge about $50.00 USD.
Do you have access to another machine that we can slave your drive to?

HI

Im just wondering if you could give me some more information on slaving to another machine? Im considering buying a new tower, as this will cost less than fixing my current PC. Im assuming this means transfering data (photos etc) from the old machine to a new one??? If so I will consider doing this if its easy enough and then blow everything off my current PC.

Cheers

[hfcg]

Read This article.
Pay attention to the slave jumper and cable settings.