-Dell Inspiron 531 Athlon 64x2 4000+ (2.10 ghz)
-250 gb hard drive
-2 gb ram (came with one, I added the other)
-NVIDIA geforce 8300 gs
-windows 7 ultimate (came with vista, but someone uploaded 7 for me, don't have that cd)
-owned it for about 3 years, don't know much about computers. hope these specs are enough.
So it all started about a week ago. While checking my email, the screen went all black and the light on the keyboard went off, but the cpu was fine. I manually shut it down and turned it back on. I got a black screen with options -start windows in safe mode/sm+networking/normally etc- I chose normally. the action center on the task bar said the video card failed and basically I needed to update some driver. I went to the nvidia website, and in fact, I did need an update. After fixing everything, everything seemed normal. problem gone, right? wrong. after a couple of days, I started my computer normally, and I didn't get my normal display. I got these:
http://tinypic.com/r/256xr49/3http://tinypic.com/r/sc7yb4/3It seems like safe mode, except that with safe mode I get no background (up there you can see I get one, a crappy, corrupted one, but I get one) AND even if it is some sort of safe mode, I didn't promp it, which shouldnt happen, right?
When I got these, I rebooted and the computer started normally. A couple days ago I got a windows update for nvidia, which I installed and before that, kapersky ran a scan. I checked online to see how bad a problem I had, and most help forums suggest that the "fan needs to be cleaned". So I turned off and unplugged everything. I opened the cpu, and I cleaned the whole thing really. Now I'm thinking I should have no further problems.
I start my computer and it starts normally. The task bar and some icons load, and while waiting for the gadgets, boom. Screen went black and the comp crashed on me. this time I didn't touch it. it rebooted by itself, and once again, I got the black screen with the options. I chose to start normally. Again it crashed, and this happened about five times. I tried system restore. I tried system repair with a repair disc. nothing. eventually I chose safe mode, logged on, shut down and went to sleep.
Next day, the computer starts normally except kapersky is going crazy. something about corrupted database. after fixing that, the *censored* computer runs like nothing happened. For about 5-6 hours. first I only surfed the web. after 6 hours, I decide to listen to wmp and at the same time use this program (sweethome3d) which is kinda heavy. It was fine for about 10 minutes, the screen showed some black horizontal lines and blinking (as if a power outage was happening) and then the computer died. I manually shut it down again, and chose to start it normally. It started like in the pics above.
I decided to restart in safe mode. I checked the device manager, and it said nvidia has code 43. I uninstalled nvidia in safe mode. I restart. I get a weird windows, not corrupted, not safe mode, but I'm not really sure it's 7. oversized icons, but images look fine. kinda like vista. well, it loads and it automatically looks for nvidia. it installs it and says that I need to restart the computer in order to complete the thing. so I restart. the log on screen looks like 7. seems fine. here's the problem. I get taskbar.. and crash. I tried the whole thing like 3 times now, and this happens over and over again. plus, IDK why the taskbar's baby blue now (used to be gray, not that I care but might be important ?) .
right now I'm typing this from the vista-looking windows. it just found the nvidia drive and I'm supposed to reboot now to complete the installation, but if it starts in normal mode it'll probably crash again. besides, kapersky is running a full scan. I have a drivers and utilities dell cd, an operating system [vista] cd, and the nvidia cd. I just don't know what to do. any help is greatly appreciated.
