RE: [PCTECH] WEIRD Dell Windows XP problem...

["Chuck Lewis" <clewis@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks Roger,

That occurred to me last night (at home) bit I did not have an XP CD with
me. I've done it with NT and W2K and it has fixed a lot of stuff.

I'll try that tonight !

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Roger Vicker, CCP
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 9:58 PM
To: PC Technical Discussion for iSeries Users
Subject: Re: [PCTECH] WEIRD Dell Windows XP problem...

Chuck,

I've seen this several times.

First try reinstalling XP without wiping everything out. Try to use a CD 
with SP2 (Autostreamer and another PC with a burner will let you create 
one) especially if it already has SP2 on it to avoid other problems. 
Boot the CD and tell it you want to install XP but not reformat or 
delete. When it says that Windows is already in a directory (Windows or 
Winnt depending on who setup the original install) tell it that you want 
to use it instead of another or new directory. It should lay right over 
the top of itself and keep all configurations/installed programs in 
place. While you can step up to SP2 this way I don't think you can use 
it to step up from Home to Professional without losing the accounts, 
configurations and installed programs.

I've had this work and been able to download Windows Updates without a 
reoccurrence. I had one PC that even this didn't work on. Had to tell 
the install to use another directory and after copying what I needed out 
of the original directory deleted the rest of it.

My research showed that this can be caused by Malware as well as a bad 
Windows Update. From the users I have seen this happen to I really think 
it was some Malware (or a LOT OF MALWARE) they got from a web site 
rather than a Windows Update.

Roger Vicker, CCP

On 1/12/2005 11:21 AM, Chuck Lewis wrote:

>Hi Folks,
>
> 
>
>Got a strange one. A friend of my sons at college has an out of warranty
>Dell pc running Windows XP. You boot the thing up and saying it comes up is
>not quite accurate. It comes up with NOTHING on the Desktop. Just a big
>empty screen. Does the same thing in Safe mode. I can do Ctl-Alt-Del and
get
>Task Manager and from there Applications tab shows NOTHING running. I can
do
>a New Task and run something from a CD. I loaded Ad Aware, Spybot,
>Spyblaster, etc. and our antivirus software Sophos that way and then I can
>use the same deal (New Task) to run any of them and they come up with
>nothing. I have booted from a boot diskette and run a command line scan
that
>finds nothing. Tried reverting back to previous config, etc.
>
> 
>
>She said this has happened before and she took it into a local shop and
they
>reformatted her hard drive to "fix" the problem. She said it was OK to do
>that again but that will be the 3rd or 4th time and there has GOT to be
>something going on.
>
> 
>
>Any ideas ?
>
> 
>
>Thanks !
>
> 
>
>Chuck
>
>  
>

-- 
*** Vicker Programming and Service *** Have bits will byte ***
www.vicker.com ***
My attitude has latitude.

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