Computer help?

Said with all the panache of a faith+works adherant. With the same urgency as I would address one of them. Bail out! Leave it rest as much as you can until the solution comes along.

Thanks.And thanks to you too Ian for the urgent advice. I'm leaving the whole thing until further notice.Thanks for everyone's help.

The disk going bad causing problems with paging is actually much more likely than the binaries being corrupted. Good point.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

You probably are not going to need anything that big so you should be able to get a new disk for under $100. YOu are also going to probably need an ATA drive NOT a SATA drive but whoever you get to replace it should check for you. You can maybe look for yourself. If you open your case and can identify your hard drive, an ATA drive will have a ribbon-like cable attaching it to your motherboard.My favorite brand of hard drive is Seagate. They tend to be the forefront in reliability although they tend not to be as much of a speedster as other drives which is why some do not like them. I'll take reliability over a 1% speed boost in the part that is the slowest thing in my computer anyway.

---

Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

http://www.pricewatch.com

That used to be a problem but it isn't anymore. Back in the day, when you turned off your computer, you did so by cutting power at the power supply transformer (if you've looked inside your computer, that's the big metal box near the back that the power cord plugs into.) Since all power to the system was terminated, the motherboard needed a trickle of power to keep the clock running and current. That battery would charge while the computer was on and run while it was off but eventually, like all rechargable batteries, its duty cycle would expire and it would lose the ability to hold a charge.After a while they redefined the specification for motherboards, power supplies, and computer cases to specify that the computer would go "soft-off", that is, the power supply would supply a constant trickle charge to the circuts on the motherboard to run the clock and other components. The other advantage to this was that you could turn your computer off from a software command in Windows (and have it automatically turn on at scheduled times) instead of at a switch on the front panel.So I highly doubt it's a clock battery issue. It's been at least ten years since I heard about a computer where that was an issue.

Faiths computer sounds like its old and going belly up. No point in throwing good money after bad. Got a link (US-side) to cheap new systems complete. She sounds like she doesn't need anything fancy or of the type whose going to go in brandishing a soldering iron (sorry sis). A bit of word/excel/explorer sounds the extent of it.

She can get an ATA harddrive for less than 30 bucks with free shipping. If she pays for a plane ticket, I'll be happy to fly there and install it for her.

I would recommendSeagate BarraCuda 7200.9 ST3802110A 80GB 7200 RPM 2MB Cache IDE Ultra ATA100 / ATA-6 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.comNot only that drive but also that online store. Newegg is just plain the best.

Just a minute, there. Have you determined that she needs a 3.5 inch drive?

Umm, I am guessing it is a standard PC configuration so yes.What is the alternative?

It could be one of the smaller ones (such as used on laptops).I agree 3.5 is more likely, but it is usually a good idea to check.

I use MS Publisher in my work, not Word, and yes "a bit of Excel" says it there. I've got the CDs for Windows XP and Office XP with Publisher which I assume are still usable though they're as old as the computer. Somebody laid a cassette tape eraser (a magnet basically) down on top of them when helping me move, and I can only hope.I don't know what an ATA or SATA hard drive means. I thought hard drives were a lot more expensive than $30 as gasby said, or less than $100 as Jazzns said.

I have no idea what I need. I guess I'll look inside the box eventually if anyone needs to know. I'm so surprised that a hard drive can be that cheap.What does "Pentium" refer to? Isn't that the capacity of a hard drive?

Your advice to uncheck all the msconfig boxes seems to have improved things a great deal. I got through a whole day's work with only one freezeup and everything went a lot faster, so thanks.