[sweetiebug]

I have a Dell Inspirion laptop operating off of the Vista Home Premium system. Yesterday was the first time I started to experience problems with it. To help give you an idea of what is happening, on my home screen when I click on an icon my computer acts like it is frozen and would not register the click of the mouse. When I restarted my computer and attempted to type in my password it would freeze or not allow me to type anything at all. When I put my computer in safe mode I could enter my password and click on the icons, the computer worked . I uninstalled a program that I had recently installed thinking that it may be the cause of the problem. I restarted my computer and the same thing happened. I attempted to put it into safe mode again but this time it did not work it appeared to freeze. I tried again but this time using the safe mode with internet access. It worked. I tried running the anti-virus program off the safe mode and it would not work it said that I needed to make it an administrator. I reverted my computer back to an earlier date. I did a disk cleanup. Even the computer did a disc repair on its own at one point. None of it worked. When I restart my computer normally. I still incur the same problem. With all my attempts the common message that comes up is checking file system on C, this type of file system is NTFS, volume label OS, one disk needs to be checked for consistency, deleting corrupt files attribute record 128.
I use Foxfire as my search engine. I downloaded it a while ago. Could this have something to do with my problem? Does anyone have any ideas on what I can do to resolve this issue or to figure out the cause of this problem?

[Advertisements]

Howszit sweetiebug?  and Welcome to GtoG

 

Sorry that your Dell is challenged in "normal mode".

 

In safe mode, try to create a new user as it seems your hard drive problem has corrupted your existing profile.  To do this, open the control panel in safe mode, and look for the User accounts.  Create a new profile and make sure its an Administrator account. When you start up after creating the new profile you should see two users that you can log onto.  If the new user  profile starts normally then I'd try to move all your info the the new profile and once everything works, (email, Skype, whatever), delete the corrupted profile.  

 

The answer your question, Firefox had nothing to do with this.  Hard drives are just an appliance that can wear out over time.  Back in the Windows 3.1 days, I had a PS/2 system whose hard drive would develop bad clusters every other day, which sometimes required me to re-load the op system.  Please back up all your data before you learn the hard way....

 

Cheers and hopes this helps... 

Edited by Mark D, 23 January 2015 - 06:19 AM.

[Mark D]

Howszit sweetiebug?  and Welcome to GtoG

 

Sorry that your Dell is challenged in "normal mode".

 

In safe mode, try to create a new user as it seems your hard drive problem has corrupted your existing profile.  To do this, open the control panel in safe mode, and look for the User accounts.  Create a new profile and make sure its an Administrator account. When you start up after creating the new profile you should see two users that you can log onto.  If the new user  profile starts normally then I'd try to move all your info the the new profile and once everything works, (email, Skype, whatever), delete the corrupted profile.  

 

The answer your question, Firefox had nothing to do with this.  Hard drives are just an appliance that can wear out over time.  Back in the Windows 3.1 days, I had a PS/2 system whose hard drive would develop bad clusters every other day, which sometimes required me to re-load the op system.  Please back up all your data before you learn the hard way....

 

Cheers and hopes this helps... 

Edited by Mark D, 23 January 2015 - 06:19 AM.

[sweetiebug]

Mark D, thank you for all your help! I have plan to do just as you have suggested but I wanted to update you and let you know that another clean disk was done, and now I am able to click on icons as well as sign in to my computer in the normal mode. It has a couple of times since frozen up, I had to shut it down and restart it again. Now there are new problems, I am currently getting three messages, javascript disabled detected, quickset has stopped working, couldn't load XP come. Currently I am not able to go on the internet other than going through Internet Explorer. I am very limited on what I can do on Internet explorer. I can enter information into the search engine, it will bring up the results. I select a site, it will open, thats all I'm able to do. I cannot go into email, Foxfire or anything else. I am using my tablet to go on the net. Hopefully your suggestion will resolve all these issues, but I have a feeling I will still need more help to resolve the three new problems. I will update you shortly. Thank you again for helping me. I really do appreciate it.

 

UPDATE:

Hi Mark.  Well at first I thought it worked.  When the message "Ouickset has stopped working" came up I was able to down load an update for the driver. I was able to down load a short cut for Skype and go into my facebook account.  When I tried to put a short cut for Foxfire onto my desktop, it wouldn't allow me.  So I thought I would uninstall Foxfire and then reinstall it.  It will not uninstall for either user account. The Javascript problem seems to be resolved under the new user account, but I still get the message "couldn't load XPcom".  And now I'm getting the "Ouickset has stopped working" message again.

 

Do you have anymore idea's or suggestions? 

 

Once again..THANK YOU for all your help.

Edited by sweetiebug, 23 January 2015 - 10:40 AM.

[sweetiebug]

Oops! I meant xpcom, not xp come. Sorry!

[Mark D]

Howszit?  

 

Sorry for not getting back sooner, (had clients in crisis).  By "clean disk", do you mean error checks on the hard drive?  I'm saying this because a freezing system maybe indicating that your hard drive is getting a bit wobbly.  Vista should be automatically defragmenting your hard drive but it will not do an error check unless you request the system perform it, (same with XP, Win 7 & Win 8).  Right mouse click on drive C, go to the Tools tab and click on error checking.  I put ticks in both the boxes that pop up so it does a full check.  When you click on the OK button it will tell you that it can only occur when the system is restarted.  Click on OK to schedule the error check and restart your system.  NOTE:  If you have not backed up your data, do it before you do this step.  Sometimes error checks can take a hard drive down, (not often, but it may find a bad cluster in a spot it can't repair).  

 

If you have done error checks, then perhaps a virus or malware?  

 

Cheers and hope this helps...

[sweetiebug]

Mark..THANK YOU for all your help.  My problem is almost solved.  Yay!

 

In answer to your question, I ran a "disk cleanup" under programs/system/tools.  And yes, we did do an error check.  After running the first one, I was able to go on the internet, things did improve, but it wasn't fixed.  That is when I sent you my earlier update in the previous message. 

 

As I had wrote, I kept getting these messages, Quickset had stopped working and couldn't load xpcom,  Your idea to switch user's was wonderful.  It helped.  I re-ran another error check and checked both boxes as you said.  So far, no more computer freeze ups.  But the computer still wasn't operating right.

 

I did some research on the net (only could use windows explorer), I found that xpcom message has to do with Mozilla Firefox. Quickset is a program by Dell.  As for Mozilla Firefox, I read that when it did a update, that some had problems with their Javascript, Mozilla said it wasn't up to date when it was (my javescript got disabled and I had to go back in an enable it again.)  Another thing I read said that when vista was updated,  others would get the message;cant find xpcom and their firefox didn't work anymore.  So I decide to uninstall Firefox.  I coundn't uninstall it by using the control panel, it wouldn't allow me.  I had to run it's file and do it manually. Thanfully I found directions on www.askvg.com site on how to remove it.  The only thing I have left is to remove the software keys in my Registry.   Because I am nervous about this, I going to wait until I can have someone help me with it.  

 

The result of everything; 1. preforming the error check, 2. opening a new user  and 3. removing Firefox, my computer is almost back to normal!!!  I still have to figure out my quickset message  through Dell.  I'll see if I can now down load a repair.  Up until this point I could not do it.  Maybe now I can.  I will up date you later.  

 

Thank you very much for all your help!

[Mark D]

Sounds good.  You may want to check out the event viewer to see what the error check found, (bad cluster, free space marked as allocated, whatever).  It's also a good idea to run the error check a second time to see if it comes out clean.

 

Open the Admin Tools control panel and then Event viewer.  The easiest way to find what the error check did is to "Find" chkdsk or Wininit, (not sure on Vista, cuz its been awhile since I've had to work on one of those).  

 

I see on the internet that some folks don't like the Quickset program and do remove it.   I have had problems with the Dell backup system on some systems that I worked on.

 

Cheers,