FIXING FRIENDS COMPUTER. NEED HELP???

Ok Hi all,

This is the story so far...

My mum's friend gave me their pc to have a look at and fix. The error that I can see is that everytime i try to use a program of any kind it comes up with a ilegal error box etc...

So far I have run the following and have come up with no errors on the hard disk...

1)I ran scandisk through windows. [bold]no errors[/bold]
2)I ran scandisk through DOS. [bold]no errors[/bold]
3)I ran Disk Defragmenter [bold]no errors[/bold]

The PC's specs are:

Intel PIII
256 RAM
roughly about a 12gig hdd

What could be causing this problem???

Could it be a virus?
If soo I'll just run AVG and clean it

otherwise

Is the hard drive just old and gone and do u think a clean reinstall can do the trick???

any help would be highly appreciated....

 

I would do a clean install, I repair pc's and its not worth the time it probably has spyware/virus or conflicts in the dlls any number of things I get over it reinstall and move on but you can always run avg and then go to housecalls trend micro and do an online total security scan but if dlls become corrupted and they do with worms and spyware it clean install time

 

Kewl thanxs for the quick reply

Just wondering do i need to have the motherboard and graphic CD at all cause all he has given me is the tower and i said i can reformat the drive and start again. That is no probs but do i need the other discs beside the Operating System that i can put on myself???

Thanxs for all your help...

 

before reinstalling everything try Ccleaner www.ccleaner.com go to issues tab and scan it for problems

 

remove all the cookies from ur harddisk using some ultra cookies remover, and also try a bugremover

 

Download the drivers for the motherboard and graphics card. Do you have the operating system for the computer if not you will need to find the restore disc. I always recommend a complete reformatting of the hard drive and starting all over.

 

what exactly does the error box say.i agree with elliott sometimes it is just best to start over if there is any info you need to save build a new partion load windows move all the files over burn to a disk since you can not start any programs without errors you can do that. then format, load windows again before putting files back on computer scan cd for viruses.i have done this before little bit of time but worth it.but on the good side a newly installed operating system runs so clean.

 

Best option is definitely a clean install. I had a friend who recently bought a PC from another person. The PC was relatively new and pretty good for $300. But as we all know some people just don't know how to take care of PCs. It was ravaged with viruses,spyware and internet files that were never dumped. IT was in such bad shape that I could get it to connect to the internet without it telling me I was not authorised to use that name and password. So I offered to give her a clean start by reinstalling XP and now it works great.

Best thing you can do is get all the info you can on the PC parts. Maybe some kind of software that will give details on the parts of the PC like the MoBo make and model, sound drives etc. Download them from the MoBo website and burn them to a cd. Then do a nice format of the drive, while your at it maybe you should recomend to install a 20 GB hard, at least. I mean why not, they are cheap and 12 GB sounds so last year. I figure this is a good time for some upgrades, if they don't mind spending a few bucks. If not then just format and install the OS and use the CD to install the MoBo drivers.

Good luck.

 

@All

Thanxs for the info....

I will go and find out the motherboard manifacturers and go to the site...
I am goin to run CCleaner and c if that helps at all...
Otherwise all im goin to do is do a clean start and just install windows98 and give them MS Office... and the ususall protection AVG etc...

Ill have a look later today and c what i can doo

Thanxs to everyone for there help...

 

Hey All again,

I just wanted to give u guys an update on the pc...

This is what i have done s

1)I ran CCleaner and that got rid of the crap which was good...
2)They had a copy of win98 on the hdd that i just copyed again goin through the setup as per ussual...
3)I went to find the motherboard info and i went to sys info in system tools and no info i could find. Can someone help me out? Can some one tell me where i should go to find the info on what brand the motherboard is b4 i go to the net???

Thanxs

 

@ddp

Is there any other way to find out the motherboard info??? maybe a peice of software?? yjat can tell me the info... Sorta like how we find out the manifaturer of a DVD, but for the motherboard.... Just wondering i dont really want to open the case....

 

hi,

If u have done with what i directed lasttime and still u r facing
the same problem again, note down the error message and press Alt+ctrl+del(if ur using win 2k,xp,98) to activate task manager and choose the process tab then select the corresponding process for that error message and click 'end process'. this may also fix ur problem. And let me know the result.

All the best
bimal

 

Go to the web site www.powerleap.com and run the test. This will tell you what the motherboard is and the version of the bios that you are using.

 

Thank every1... I will try out the options you guys have posted and i will get back to you guys as soon as possible

Thanxs again