I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with Windows XP Media Edition. My computer has been doing some odd things recently, including going to a black screen which can't be reactivated with the mouse. I was unable to get internet access today and ran Glary Utilities to clean up the registry and turn-off some of the unnecessary processes which have been starting automatically. After running Glary my internet access was restored and the computer seemed to be operating well. Later in the day, however, it was back to a black screen that was unresponsive to the mouse or to the "on" button. The computer had to be shut down by holding the "on" button for several seconds. Now the computer starts up only briefly when turned on. It then freezes at the initial Dell screen. The same thing happens when trying to use either the Windows Resources CD or Norton Internet Security CD as emergency start-up disks.
One other clue. I deleted a couple of stray .dll files that were sitting on the computer desktop, and now wonder whether they were important. I don't know how they ended up on the desktop.
Do you have any suggestions? I'm assuming that this is probably unresolvable and I'll have to move on to a new computer, but wanted to check with you first.
Thanks for your help.
JH