Had some registry problems and a few errors, so purchased System Mechanics, installed and ran. Now I have a gigantic paperweight. Internet explorer no longer exists except as an icon; Norton Internet Security has been deactivated; I have spent countless hours on the phone with tech people from Norton, dsl company, and sys mech to no avail. Frustration has caused some very bad language to come flying from my mouth. Since ya'll are better than any tech support, I decided to come here. As I am in the middle of my second build of a new computer (going just fine thanx to previous info from ya'll)this is interferring with the status quo. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
I tried that and it told me sytem restore is not available. So far, Internet Explorer is gone and I have tried resetting; Norton Inter Sec 2011 is de activated;I have gone the F8 and F10 routes to no avail; tried msconfig with same result. Other than reinstalling XP and having to start all over again, any help you can give will be greatly appreciated. FYI bought System Mechanic from a store, off the shelf. Didn't know it was disaster on a disc.
Then I suggest you contact System Mechanics as the problems didn't start to happen until after installing and running that program.
2 hours on the phone with them was enuf. I"ll keep trying tomorrow, and then will probaly do a complete install starting with XP but not ending with SYS Mech. Thanx
I'm never going to be a fan of Norton, but I will suggest other anti-virus software such as Avast and AVG. Both are free with the ability to also purchase a subscription fee based version as well. Let's see, after the install, run all updates on your computer for microsoft, make sure all drivers you use for devices are updated as well. I then suggest you make a recovery backup(System Restore point). When everything is done, then try running your system mechanic. If the problem occurs after running that, I can only suggest going back to the system restore point.
No a recovery backup is best left to an imaging program so after first installing your OS,add a few of your favourite apps including macrium reflect (it's free) & create an image,this is your base image,for doing a restore to a clean basic working system,you could also add comdo firewall it's works pretty good however i suggest unticking their antivirus program in the install as it detects far too many false positives next image is created after adding more of your needed programs,if you have nero 10 now is a good time to install it before getting any other .NET framework crap,you could add riping programs as well & cyberlink power dvd etc 3rd image after install of SP3 if you don't have that version of xp,if you have an older version of xp say none or SP1 skip SP1 & SP2 & use the SP3 install disc you can download the iso & burn it to cd,it will be fine as SP1 & 2 are included in SP3 OK 4th image get any remaining updates for xp from 5th & onwards start creating daily,weekly,fortnightly or monthly onetime images,think of them as system restore points you can delete the oldest as you run out of disc space WARNING:You need more than one copy so have an external hdd handy
The saga continues. Bought a new hard drive and tried a clean install to no avail. Trying to format but not able to. So, I am doing alot of reading to figure out why install won't work. Last hdd was sata and so is this one. Will try some more info I've downloaded. But not sure what if anything will work. Didn't havve alot of info on this computer but I still wonder if the hard drive died or was it something else that is deviling this computer. Thanx.
is the hd seen by the bios? is the hd seen by windows? did you make a partition 1st before trying to format?
no partition means you cannot format the drive. when installing xp, it will give you the option to create the drive & once you do that then it will give you the option for a full format or quick format, go with quick format.
I don't think it will format till the hdd is initilised first,you'll need to go into computer management,it will list your hard drives,the box to the left will have "initialise" do it then all should be hunk a dory
sata drive and xp .. needs a different approach, like changing the drive mode in the bios and either having the sata driver on a floppy or adding it to xp changing drive mode is easiest... I bet the sata driver was removed as some sort of "malware" by that nasty program.
What is computer management? Is it in BIOS? Where? I will try changing to AIHC(?) and try again. I can get updates and put on disc (cd) and install. Tomorrow I wll try everything I know how. I have printed out your replys to try tomorrow. We'll see. Thanx and I will keep checking back.
start-right clik on free space on menu-clik properties-clik customize button (on the start menu tab,you should be there by default)-clik advanced-(you can set my docs,my computer,my music,my pictures etc to display as a fly out menu's) scroll down to "SYSTEM ADMINISTRATIVE TOOLS" tick display on all progs menu & the start menu,so now apply the ok,go to the all progs list the "admin tools" folder is now present,clik comptuer management OK In computer management you should now have a new window,clik on disk management you should now have a window listing all drives,in the square box to the left you should see your SATA (if you have only 1 disk it will say Disk 0) if you have two disks naturally the master with windows on it will be disk 0 the new sata will be disk 1 the fly out menu i mention above is 2ndry to what you need,just mentioned it as it's real handy,if you google microsoft power toys tweakui,you can use that to make performance adjustments,it works well on the fly outs by decreasing the delay,you could also look at installing xdntweaker as well it's an addon to tweakui & has extra choice performance settings
