I have had so many problems with my computer. It was practically locked up, so I re-imaged it back to factory settings. Then I began re-installing a few things that were essentials. I've done the anti-malware stuff and it looks like all is ok. However, my startup takes about 7 to 8 minutes.
I have an external hard drive that I use for all of my important docs, music and pics. I was afraid to even turn it on with the machine until I had it back to "normal", but have had to access it several times now. I want to know if this thing is fixable. Terrified I will lose all on my external hard drive.
I'm running Vista service pack 2 on a 32 bit operating system.
Few things I've noted: before I re-imaged, I was having trouble with Firefox, Explorer, Flashplayer, Java. I tried all the possible combinations I could before finally relenting. Everything I seemed to be doing online crashed for one reason or another. In addition, my HP all-in-one printer started having driver problems. I uninstalled each of the above and re-installed. Updated the driver from HP web-site directly, also. Was having odd things happening when I tried to use the keyboard and mouse - kept popping up with a window asking me to configure my keyboard keys, so I plugged in another keyboard. Every once in a while, it happens again, but I re-boot and sometimes it's successful. I can tell when it won't be because if I type more than four characters (say, my password, etc.), the computer shuts down by itself. My external hard drive re-names itself almost every time I attach another hardware item (phone, memory card, etc.) to another drive. It's been everything from H: to now M:.
I'm worried I might have done something early on, like - could there be two instances of windows running? Before I used this system, I had my hard drive attached to a different one with XP. Also, could I have screwed up the partitions?
Help! I know just enough to be dangerous and I'm afraid the further I go, the more messed up I will make it!
Thank you!