Computer Woes

[Bird]

I still cannot get my computer straightened out and working right all the time. Basically, it's working, but does a few peculiar things that it used to not do. One example is that every time it booted up for the last couple of months, it popped up a dialogue box “Welcome to Windows XP Setup Wizard Q329048” and I could either click "Cancel" or "Continue". If I clicked "Continue" it went through an installation sequence that included "updating registry keys", but I couldn't tell that the computer did anything differently whether I "installed" that or "cancelled" it.

On TBN, I've been going to the forums that show "new" messages and have my preferences set for "recent messages", but about a week ago, instead of going to recent messages, it goes to messages back over a year ago and I have to page through to the last page or two to find the recent messages.

And perhaps the most frustrating thing has been an inability to install TurboTax. It goes through the entire installation process, gets to "creating desktop icon and program files", then pops up a dialogue box "Error creating necessary version files; contact Intuit technical support". Well I spent a lot of hours with Intuit technical support and got nowhere; tried everything they suggested and nothing worked. And I tried with both TurboTax Basic and TurboTax Deluxe. Problem was not with their CD because it installed on another computer after I gave up.

So my daughter took the computer to a guy who's supposedly the computer whiz at her company. She says he can fix anything on a computer and has all kinds of equipment to check out hardware and software. After two days, he gave up. He did get rid of the “Welcome to Windows XP Setup Wizard Q329048” (don't know what he did to accomplish that), but he never could get TurboTax to install. And when I got it back, I now have no sound at all, when that was working fine before he worked on it.

So his suggestion is to buy and install a second hard drive, reload all my software onto the new hard drive, and then when it's all working right, clean off the existing hard drive and use it for backups. Supposedly I could toggle between the two drives. So my question is: Does that sound like a reasonable solution? Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a computer. This thing was new in August 2001; Dell Dimension 8100.

And when I posted this message just now, without doing anything else, the screen that popped up was the "related" forum with the first message listed having been posted on 4/6/00. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[RoyJackson]

"Or do I need to just bite the bullet and buy a computer. This thing was new in August 2001; Dell Dimension 8100. "

I've used XP at work..wifey has it on her Dell. I'm still running 98SE. Just doesn't seem like XP is ready for commercial or home usage. There are too many compatibility problems and I've got a real big problem with having to ask Microsoft for permission to run my computer!
Well, that's the rant!

Sooner or later, I'm going to have to upgrade to XP since Microsoft is soon ending support for Win98. I've already decided to set up a dual boot system (using two seperate hard drives...one mastered and the other slaved). Now, I'll have to select which OS runs when I boot, but that's OK with me.

Bird, ol' buddy...for a long term solution, I'd look into setting a dual OS system up. But right now, I'd format that drive (backing up everything) and re-install XP. Make sure you have all the documentation, as you'll probably have to call Microsoft to re-activate the system (Grrrrrrrrr!).
That will keep you busy for a few days, reloading any applications you have currently installed. Since XP doesn't use DOS, I've no idea how to format the drive however.

"On TBN, I've been going to the forums that show "new" messages and have my preferences set for "recent messages", but about a week ago, instead of going to recent messages"

In your preferences, make sure the Default Sort Order is set to Date Descending.
That should get you back to reading the most recent posts.
Now, when you shut down and reboot or restart your browser, don't be surprised if you have to change your Preferences again. If you do, log off TBN, delete the cookie(s) then log back on and correct the Preferences.

Hope this works for you, Bird...

 

[lamarbur]

How about formatting the hard drive you have and loading Windows 2K clean? I went to 2k when it forst came out and never looked back. Although, I just loaded Windows server 2003, only because my friend "gave' me this OS and it costs 4 grand out of the box. To do it all over, I would return to Win2K

 

[OkeeDon]

My reply is similar to Roy's. I went to the Windows site and did a search for "Q329048" and came up with this article. Now, I don't understand half of what they're saying, but certain words and phrases jump out at me -- "vulnerability", "attacker", etc. Sounds to me like someone's been foolin' around with your machine (from the outside) and has scrambled things up a bit.

The second clue is the Intuit program -- I haven't heard anything direct (although I haven't gone looking), but I've had enough problems with Intuit programs to suspect they're a target as much as Microsoft stuff. This probably doesn't have anything to do with Intuit; almost everyone has some Intuit program on their computer, so it would be a natural target. All I know is that I have both Quicken and QuickBooks on my computer, and I had to do uninstalls and clean installs of both, more than once, when they get corrupted and won't update themselves. That was back in the days when I thought I was smart enough to not need any anti-virus software.

Now, you could empty your drive, reformat it (there's got to be a way to do it, somewhere), reinstall everything, run all the updates, etc. and have a clean installation. Let me know when you crawl back out of your computer area, exhausted, and be aware that some viruses, etc., can hide in sections of a disk that can't be reformatted, ready to pop out again. In my opinion, that drive is toast.

You could install a new hard drive and go through the same stuff, with a clean, new install of XP on the new drive, then re-install all the programs, then transfer all the data. Still a long job, but you're safe from anting that might be hiding on the old drive.

Or, you could get a new computer with XP installed already. What you save here is doing the updates; presumably, the system that comes on the computer would be fairly up to date. You still have to go through all the installs of your software. I just switched from a desktop to a wireless laptop, and I'm going though that, myself. Not fun. But, my Intuit stuff is updating itself again.

Since some of the annoying and/or damaging stuff has been removed, try uninstalling all previous versions of TurboTax from your system, copy the data to backup, and present a clean slate to the new TurboTax. If you need to access your previous records, you can always re-install the old versions of TTax when you need them. If you aren't being audited and don't need to print hard copies of the returns to apply for a loan, you may never need to re-install them. If that works, you'll have gotten around the latest problem.

I don't have a clue about why you don't have sound, except that the couple of times it happened to me, it turned out I had the speakers plugged into the wrong hole.

It also doesn't help with your TBN problems. Probably only a clean install would help. The cheapest good solution is probably a new hard drive; if I did that, I would use the old drive for target practice -- it would never find it's way back into my system. The new ones are so blamed big, and so cheap, it isn't worth it to save the old one.

You can blame Microsoft and XP, or Intuit, but in my opinion, they're no better or worse than any other software out there. I've heard some horror stories about other operating systems and programs, too. Nothing is foolproof. The only difference is that there are so many MS and Intuit programs out there, it makes it worth it (in a perverted way) for hackers to fool around with them.

 

[Bird]

I didn't mention previously that this computer came with Windows ME, along with a certificate to upgrade to Windows XP for $20 when XP became available. I did that. It came with an XP "upgrade" CD and that didn't work. It also came with an XP CD that says for new computers only. After a great deal of time on the phone with Dell, they had me do what they called a "clean install" which did not involve formatting the hard drive. We finally got it working that way, but from that time on my hard drive is E: instead of C:.

 

[MossRoad]

Hi Bird!

If it's really bugging you and you want it fixed... get a new hard drive. Back up your data to some CDs or something like that. Remove the old hard drive and keep it in a safe place. Install the new one and load your copy of XP. Then go and do all the windows updates until there aren't any more. Then install all of your anti-virus software and your firewall software if you have it. After it is all loaded, install the programs that you want to use. Then load on your data from your backups and scan them for viruses.

Keep that old hard drive, because it never fails that you'll want something from it some day. If you need something, just pull out the new drive, put in the old drive, copy the needed stuff to CD and swap drives again.

I've done this every few years or so. Sometimes things get so monkeyed up that it takes more time to find the problems and repair them than it takes to just install fresh. I have the advantage of having a few PCs, so while one is down for re-load, I can still surf TBN on a different one. Heck, I still use a 486/33 laptop with a B/W screen. It works, but is UGLY! /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif

 

[RoyJackson]

"Remove the old hard drive and keep it in a safe place"

There's enough room in the tower to install another drive, so why pull the old one out? Just set the jumpers for Master and Slave (the ribbon cable to the main boards have two connectors).

I've had two drives in my tower for quite a while (heck, the tower I'm using was purchased originally in '95 or '96). One nice thing about two drives is when you format. Just copy all the important files (not the applications) to the slave drive and format the master. That eliminates the problem of backing up on CD-ROM's.
The new BIOS will recognise two hard drives with no problems. The chance that both drives will fail simultaneously (unless there is a catastrophy with the computer) is quite small.

Some things you should look at for the sound problem:
1) Right Click on the little speaker icon on your task bar and open Volume Controls. Make sure the sliders are near the maximum and none of the "Mute" boxes are checked.
2) Go to Start-Settings-Control Panel-SYSTEM and click on the Device Manager. You'll see SOUND, VIDEO and Game Controllers near the bottom. Click on the "+" to the left. Your sound card should be listed there. It there is a "?" or "!" just the the left of the sound card listing, there's a problem. I won't go into rrouble shooting that, at this point. If no "?" or "!", click on the sound card. It should say "This device is working properly" or words to that effect. If it's working properly, then the sound is muted somewhere. Well, you can try turning up the volume of your speakers....or, as Don said, make sure they're plugged in correctly. Another thing to look for in Control Panel is an icon for the Sound Card itself. They is for mine..that's loaded when one installs the card drivers. It's like a control panel within the Microsoft Control Panel. If there is an icon, click on it and make sure the volume controls are set correctly and there is nothing checked to mute the sound.
There is also a "Media" or "Multimedia" icon in the MS Control Panel. Click on that too. Again, it there any way to adjust volume or mute?
About the last thing you can do is back to Device Manager and delete the sound card. When you reboot the computer, XP should have the drivers...but if you've a seperate install disk (for the card), have that handy.
After you've checked all the above, it's time to go into the case and ensure everything is plugged in securely. Your Sound Card will be part of the main board (not untypical with Dell and Gateway) or in one of the PCI slots. One way to recognize the sound card is by a cable leading to your CD-ROM (or DVD) drive. That cable will have a small (½" wide) connecter plugged into the CD-ROM (or DVD) drive.

Well, that's enough typing for now...

 

[Bird]

Roy, your troubleshooting instructions appear to be similar to others I found in the Help and Support files, but you won't find a "Device Manager" on this computer. You also won't find a speaker icon on the task bar. Some places I've checked show there to be no audio device, while others show it to be in use by another program. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

I did open the case and checked for any loose connections without finding any, although that was before reading your message, so I didn't really know what I was looking for. I like the idea of having two hard drives if I knew they could be formatted (i.e., wiped clean) like I used to do with Windows 3.1.

 

[RoyJackson]

"but you won't find a "Device Manager" on this computer"

Try going to Control Panel-System. When the System opens up, look for a "Hardware" tab. Click on that, then "Device Manager" should be about ½ down on the right of the menu that opens.

My wife reminded me when she was having sound card problems, she didn't have the "speaker" icon either. I deleted the sound card (in Device Manager...it was a Santa Cruz Turtle Beach card (something like that)); then shut the computer down (not reboot). Then I opened the case and physically removed the card from the PCI slot and reseated it. Once restarted, the card software could be re-installed.
We never did figure out why she lost the sound. It may have been when we physically moved her computer, or just a software glitch. She does have that speaker icon now. Since your computer was also physically moved, and the sound didn't work after it was returned, there's a distinct possibility the card jossled loose. It doesn't take much.... The directions for trouble shooting in my previous post apply to a dedicated sound card (as opposed to the sound card being integral to the main board).

Adding another hard drive is pretty easy, Bird. If you could do routine maintenance on your Kubota, you can install another drive. The instructions with the drives walk you right through the installation. The only part that can be tricky is setting the jumpers for Master and Slave. The new drive's instructions will describe that. The currently installed drive may be the hassle since it's unlikely you got instructions with that (to ensure the jumpers are set at "Master"). If you decide to go that direction (installing another drive), e-mail me and we'll go through the process.

As far as formatting XP, I did a web search on that. Quite a few sites describe the procedure. Do a search yourself and see if it's something you want to try

 

[frank_f15]

Bird , sorry for your computer woes(know how frustrating that can be) but i have been using XP for about 10 monts now and find it to be quite stabil! some others will disagree, but that is my personal obsevation. not being a computer wiz, seems like something got screwed up on your machine, y might need to get a new drive and start from scratch. know it is a pain but so are all the problems u are having now.