Help me fix this computer.

[CtrlAltDestroy]

Ok, I have a seriously messed up guy here. (guy=Computer)

Boss wants me to:
1. empty temp files
2. Install our special Tech CD
3. Run scandisk
4. Defrag

The tag on the guy says:

customer says that scandisk caused an error in kernel32
Previous employee uninstalled Driver for Visioneer 5300
Previous employee ran regclean
Previous employee says it keeps locking up.

And now, What I have is- a frozen screen. It seems that it locked up in the middle of a Scandisk disk surface check. The mouse moves. I'm going to kill it and reboot it.

Any tips? I'll tell you anything else you'd need to help me.

 

[Vortex22]

Format C:
Reinstall Windows

 

[illusion88]

What opperating system, and system specs. Cant work without em.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

1) What OS? (Looks like 9X to me)
2) Complete hardware info dump (board, chip, RAM, drives, etc)

Off the top of my head, get out of the Windows GUI before scandisking. The corrupt kernel32 smells like "borked install" - you may need to recover that file or even reinstall

- M4H

 

[CtrlAltDestroy]

Specs? i have no clue right now, off the top of my head. It looks like win98 or ME, but the screen's frozen so I can't check. I'll kill/reboot and see what Info I can find.

Now:

It's booting. It's ME.

How do I dump the specs? I know how to get some of the memory info, but is there an easier way outside of the Windows enviornment?

When it comes to hardware and BIOS, I'm clueless. I'm a software dude. But that's why I came here.

 

[CtrlAltDestroy]

Wow. This thing locks up every 2 minutes. I can't do anyting. It is windows ME so there is no dos support. I'm going to have to use a boot disk on it.

 

[ProviaFan]

Corrupted sector on hard disk? Boot into safe mode and run scandisk. Dust / cat hair / etc. in heatsink? Open case, find out, use compressed air.

 

[snidy1]

Originally posted by: jliechty
Corrupted sector on hard disk? Boot into safe mode and run scandisk. Dust / cat hair / etc. in heatsink? Open case, find out, use compressed air.

Yep, try that

 

[DJFuji]

fdisk!

 

[Cogman]

Well, What they are saying is correct, but if there is faulty ram in the system, It might not install correctly. if you can, try for windowsupdate.com to see if some of their buggy bug fixes fix something . In my oppinion, WinME a bad os. Win98, Win2000, and WinXP are the best of the microsoft OS'S

 

[jonmullen]

I though ME still had DOS support, try hitting F8 durring boot and start in safemode dos promt. It should have DOS I mean its booting out of it.

 

[WarCon]

Still have the restore registry file from regclean? Might of taken something out it shouldn't have.

 

[JCK86]

I have dealt with a couple hundred hard drives with bad sectors in the past month (Horror!). Run scandisk from DOS, and allow it to do a surface scan. Avoid fdisk at all costs, because if it hits the bad sector while "verifying drive integrity", it may hang and never partition again.

If all else fails, the HDD manufacturer's diag utility is an option. Your Mileage May Vary.