Can my computer need to be retired after only 2 years?

Here's problem - maybe someone here has ideas:

It has always been slow to boot up - several minutes. However, in recent days, it is taking 45 minutes to boot up! The little dots under the Windows XP logo start moving across the rectangle they are in, but they stop after a few seconds, and just sit there 45 mins.
Here's what I have done:
Scanned for viruses - None
Was on phone with HP and closed all applications at Startup excpet 2 essential ones - No help.
Reset the computer back to a Year ago's setting - No Help.
Defragged drive - No help
Emptied Recycle Bin, compressed files, removed many items from desktop, used Repair tool for hard drive, Deleted cookies, Temp files, browsing history - a few other things that I no longer remember.
All to no avail.
Tried rebooting in Safe mode - still takes all that time.

Frustrating.

Anyone have anything else they think I should try?

i was thinking of switching to a Mac, but not quite yet.

THANKS

Buy an imac - the most amazing machine I have ever used. Almost zero learning curve. Boots in about 15 seconds, if. Why wait?

Gil, Jerel thinks you do have a virus. You should try scanning for viruses in safe mode - although he thinks the virus has corrupted your hard drive, and you would need to get a new one.

Gil,

As you know job duties have forced me to enter the Windows world. I am actually become adept with its 'Microsoftness'.
That being said.... I have checked thru my manuals (all of which are on-line because tech people don't understand non-tech people).
I have found this suggestion for your problem: Get a Mac.

Doug
(g,d&r)

Gil, since you already did what I would of suggested you should do, try this:

Bootvis

It is a free program from Microsoft to make your pc boot faster.

Another vote for a Mac. My laptop did something weird at the Marriott in Copenhagen, and after that I couldn't get it to boot up at all. There is a discussion board on the Apple support forum; once we got on the ship, I posted on that and a nice man in London walked me through the fix. Voila! All I had to do was start it up with one key held down, and it basically fixed itself.

Macs are just the ultimate.

Gil,

My Roar buddy speaks the wisdom of the ages....learn from her & go well into the future.

Doug

(Ok, ages aren't as long as they used to be....whatever!)

I think you have some spyware or virus program.

You can run a virus check using this program for free. I've done that with clients and it finds things MacAfee and Norton have missed

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Unplug the Computer for one minute the re- plug and power up... Some times this helps.

First off, I totally agree about the Mac suggestions - I do think that the Mac OS tends to be more stable than Windows (even XP). Having said this, I just took my MacBook to our local Apple Store to swap out a defective battery (wasn't being recognized by the computer) so Macs DO have problems on occasion as well.

But getting back to the matter at hand ... I agree that it could be a virus/spyware issue but my personal bet is that your Windows installation has become unstable from conflicting startup items - including items that you can't deactivate on startup. Sometimes these conditions can be fixed by software tools like the one that Karen mentioned above (hey, it's free, it's worth a try) or something like Norton WinDoctor (part of Norton Utilities). If all else fails, I'd backup your documents to an external hard drive and reinstall Windows from scratch with the disks that came with your computer. You may notice that things "zip" a lot more than they used to, not just in startup but in general usage as well.

Sorry - it's usually a painful process to fix these problems. :(

Masaki

Just a tip for all MAC users (this must be my day for straying from the original question)....if you are thinking about using the "file vault".....DON'T!!! I found out from experience, that it is way more trouble than it's worth. I searched the Apple forums AFTER (unfortunately) I used it, and found out that the general consensus is not to use it.

There must be some kind of magnetic shield surrounding me, messing up all computers.
After reading all your suggestions, BEFORE I did anything, I first shut down my computer - it started up in 15 seconds!!!!!
I could not believe my eyes, no fix, and it booted better than ever. Then I said to myself "This can't be correct - so I again rebooted. Right back where it was. 45 minutes!

Ran bootvis. Or tried to, anyway. It wouldn't run - got a "Network error trying to read file". Tried it again - same error message.
Ran Trend Micro Housecall. Or tried to anyway. Started it & it said it was going to take 2 1/2 hours to scan. About 30 minutes into the scan, it just shut down. Closed the browser window!
Went to run it again - 32 hours! About 5 minutes later, it said 2 1/4 minutes remaining. And it seemed to stop there - saying 2 1/4 minutes for well over 10 minutes. It eventually finished, and told me I had 1 infection - a Freeloader_Drivercleaner. I clicked on the link to learn about that virus, but then when i went back to fix it, instead of taking me to Results where I could fix it, it took me back to the start page to scan again!

So to protect my files, I want to do a backup. Ran the DVD Burn program on my computer to try to make DVD of all my photos, docs, etc - It cannot find the DVD drive. It thinks it doesn't exist. But I can read from that drive - but it won't write to it.

But this isn't the only computer issue. Yesterday my laptop died. The power socket isn't working. Fortunately, it is under warranty, but I'll be without that for 2 - 4 weeks.

And to top it all off, I was out driving, and needed directions, so used my car GPS system. It took me in the opposite direction, and got me lost!

GRRRRRR!!!!!

Gil, I have an abacus in the attic that you can borrow :)

Thanks, Karen.
Last time I used an abacus all the beads ended up all over the floor!
What a sight - chasing those things all around trying to add some numbers!

Gil,

The Abacus is passe. Fingers and toes work quite well. When you run out of them, just make a guess and fill that number in the spaces provided.

The power supply died on my old Mac laptop. I took it in to the Apple Store, and they sent it to Houston overnight. Houston fixed it, and overnighted it back. I was without it for less than a business week.

Just sayin...

I hear ya!
Trying to figure out just how much trouble it will be to migrate everything to a Mac. Primarily my Photoshop, which I only just bought, and Office. And what about all my mail saved in Outlook. I don't think Mac can run Outlook - I assume there is some way to input saved outlook mail however to a Mac mail program. One option is to put Windows on the Mac, too, and then just install the stuff I already have for Windows. But I wonder if that defeats a purpose of using a Mac, esepcially with Photoshop. Although I've herad that the new Photoshop CS2 operates better in a windows environment than on a Mac - but I haven't been able to figure out if that refers to using the Windows version on a Mac, or the Mac version.
Decisions Decisions.

To add to my Electronics Woes - at 7 Am today the power went out here, shutting down this stupid computer once again! So when I later went to get on the computer, ahd to boot it up - and had that fun 45 minute wait again!

And now my second CD drive is not being detected.

So much is going on here that it is really funny now!

Hmm. Well short of switchint the MacOS, you have to get your data backed up somehow, and with both your DVD/CD drives not being recognized, you might need to get some technical help locally to get this rectified.

But *if* you can your data backed up, you need to do a complete reinstall of Windows, I would think, from scratch, and hopefully after your hard drive has been reformatted.

I have yet to find a clean way to import old Outlook mail files to the Mac environment. There are some for-sale utilities out there that purport to do so but the demos that they have of them mashed up my Email files so I'm leery about the whole process. As of now, my old Outlook emails remain in Outlook in a virtual Windows environment on my Mac (finding that I don't really need to look at them very often).

Masaki

Guys, Mac runs a program called Entourage that you can import your Outlook psd stuff into. That's what the ex-PC guru next to me on the couch says. He's gone to the Mac side.

As for the slow start up, the guru says that your hard drive could be preparing to fail (in which case you want to yank it and take it to someone to get your data off), or you could have bad memory. If you are in love with your PC, you can try replacing the memory first. If that doesn't work, you now have extra memory on your hands, but you can try installing a new harddrive. If that doesn't work, you probably have a bad processor.

Shawna - I'm trying not to support the MS juggernaut by buying more MS programs on the Mac. ;)

Masaki

HA!, M, funny!

Edit to add...

Gil

You may want to search the threads or post some questions here. Hope that helps some.

I bit the bullet!
Writing this from the new iMac.

Screen is beautiful, but somewhat confused, even after looking at a training video.

It's a different world - but i think I'll master it pretty soon.

Right now I am fighting with it over my iPod. It will not a llow me to transfer the songs from my iPod onto the new computer, telling me it is already linked with another library, and giving me only one option - to ERASE everything on my iPod.

Congrats Gil! iPods won't allow you to transfer music from one computer to another - it's part of that pesky copy protection. Copy your songs off your old computer to a CD/DVD or two or three (depends on how many songs you have) - easiest if you have another external hard drive that you can use for this. Then, copy those songs onto your Mac's hard drive into the Music folder of your home directory. Then have iTunes on your Mac import those songs into its library. It'll have to erase the songs on your iPod and reload them in off your Mac. A pain, I know, but one of the prices we pay for copy protection.

Masaki

I got a new computer and I copied my Itunes folder onto a portable hard drive and then copied it again to my new computer. Installed IiTunes to the new computer and then imported the songs without any problem.

I was able to copy the songs onto my Mac from the iPod after I reloaded them from my old computer onto the iPod by updating & then setting the upload to manual insteaed of automatic. But no playlists. Not a big problem.

I am AMAZED at the differences in picture quality from the old HP computer to the Mac. The whites are really WHITE! It makes my pictures look so much better! I didn't even have to learn to take pics better - just needed this new computer! ;)

Cool, I just learned something! :)

Masaki

I'm coming back to Mac...going to the computer store this morning - my PC is dying so it's not a moment too soon. I'll come back for advice - the only think I think I'll really miss are my "Publisher" documents - but I'm sure I can create some things even better on a mac!

Margo - Apple has a new program called Pages that you can purchase (it's part of iWork) that does page layouts (like newsletters and the like). Might be what you're looking for. :)

Masaki

Masaki...hello from my new mac....I love it but I'm in a bit of a learning curve here - it will talk a while to adjust!

Margo,

I am actually Dual Platform in that I have a Mac and a PC; The Mac is mostly for training people on the Mac version of Accounting software.

It's quite a bit different in daily use, but once you learn that you can use the Command keys in lieu of Ctrl and you use the "X" on the left side of the screen for closing windows, the rest will fall into place.

Kathy...thanks - I needed that tip about the command key - just tried to scroll back with the ctrl/arrow key - didn't work!

Glad to be helpful, Margo!

Mac is not my "first language" having used PC's since they had floppy drives only and Command Prompt was something you'd better understand as well as "XCopy", Configsys and autoexec.bat file editing! It took me two full days to set up my first computer - I was afraid it would blow up or something!

OMG, Kathy, autoexec files - how funny. Feels like a million years ago.

Margo, feel free to PM or e-mail me if I can help with any mac stuff and congrats on the new purchase! What did you wind up buying?

My hard drive "died" yesterday (my computer was 6 years old - ancient in the computer world) and my bosses bought me this new Gateway with Windows Vista. Talk about entering a new era...3D windows all over the place flying at me. (I am a multi-tasker and have LOTS of windows open at any given time.)

And this wide-screen monitor is so bizarre.
This is going to take so long to get used to. I don't like this stuff so far but I know I have to get used to it. Windows Vista won't even support our Palm Desktop program yet. (Yet? Ever??? :( )

Also, my current multi-function printer cannot be used with Vista...

If we thought Bill Gates was making a lot of dinero before, now I cannot even begin to imagine...

Kristin,
I think you are so right!!!!

Yes, I found that to be a problem. Almost none of the software I use for my business is Vista compatible except the newest 2007 version of QuickBooks.

I ended up buying a couple new computers with WinXP the end of the year to avoid the meltdown I had when XP came out. Sorry I did not buy one more.

Even with the new, Non-Vista computers, my faithful HP Laserjet 4 - a parallel printer - wasn't compatible with my new XP computers and we laid it to rest. Now I need another desktop at the office, and I am hanging on because I lost weeks of work when XP came out, I upgraded and had a host of compatibility issues. I hate this forced obsolesence. I only see Bill Gates making money on this - maybe I need to resort back to the abacus.

Well I love my mac but it's going to take some retraining.

R...got the macbook and a 20" video display, wireless mouse and keyboard. So my "book" can travel but at home it will think it's a desktop!

I've been so busy I haven't really had time to get it all set up - that's really unusual for me - unopened boxes a rare sight at my house!

You guys slay me with all this Mac stuff. The first one to get into my head about the Mac was DougW and now there seems to be a herd of you lemmings lining up to buy one and I'm afraid I might be next.

:rolleyes: Ray

Ray...be warned...once you enter the store you're a goner! Their computers are beautiful.

Have fun shopping!

Margo