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Author Topic: would appreciate advice please  (Read 3074 times)

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bethjess

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would appreciate advice please
« on: December 02, 2007, 01:44:48 AM »

I purchased a new laptop 6 months ago after i came to the end of my tether with the one which i use to use (and eventually gave away to a friend for her university work), causing constant problems such as crashing and the dvd rewriter failing and ultimately the harddrive totally dying after only 2 years. I was awaiting the return of the older one which had been sent off for repair for the 4th time in only 2 years and after hearing nothing after 6 weeks and getting no sense from the people who were meant to be repairing it, i thought id cut my losses and buy a new one. Because the 1st one had cost me a grand (includes 5 year cover plan), i thought i would go for a cheaper one , but now i seriously wish i hadnt for a few reasons including the fact that just 2 weeks after purchasing the new one the old one came back with a new hardrive fitted .
 
I am getting more and more problems developing with the new one, including
1)it refusing to do more then one thing at a time, ie if i am listening to an mp3 and trying to surf the internet or something it stops dead,
 
2)an annoying message saying" windows explorer has stopped working" appears frequently when i am in the middle of stuff and then everything going off ,
 
3) my windows media player has stopped working completely
 
4) my printer which worked fine with the xp system wont work atall with this despite downloading the new drivers, so i purchased a new one and this wont work either
 
5) The most annoying thing is that it wont even let me create the restore disk-there wasnt any windows disks with it when i bought it, because aparently they now expect you to make your own.
 
6 )aswell as this the system is very sluggish and my older one was much faster, and i am ashamed to admit that i have only just realized why, the machine runs vista basic and has only a 1.6 ghz processor and 446mb memory , while my old one running xp had a 512mb memory and 2.8 ghz processor and i could also run paint shop pro on it which I like to use but havent been able to since getting this one. 
 
I have since heard that windows vista needs a minimum of  2 gb of ram to run correctly, which sems to explain why i am having such problems. Its very annoying because i have barely nothing on this pc and yet its still so slow
 
I contacted the people with whom i have the cover plan and all they said is do a packard bell reformat from the c drive . I did this and it has made no difference atall. So i contacted them again and they said nothing of any help atall. It seems i wasted my money and am continuing to do so because they are taking £7 per month direct debit from me for my insurance cover.
I just dont know what to do, should i try to sell this one or give it away,? or persevere with it?,
 
Sorry to talk for so long but i am  quite distressed
 
Thank you for any advice

patio

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Re: would appreciate advice please
« Reply #1 on: December 02, 2007, 10:11:22 AM »
Not to over simplify your issues but a machine that is only 6 months old should not be acting this way.
I would suggest not trying to fix it yourself as it could void the warranty.
Contact the manufacturer directly Packard Bell and voice your displeasure. This gives you a paper trail for your complaint.
Immediately after contact the retailer and let them know you have talked to the Manuf. and that you would rather resolve this without getting them involved.
They should be alot more receptive to offering you a replacement solution at this point instead of simply telling you to run the Recovery CD's.

Good Luck and remember the squeaky whell gets the grease but you have to be somewhat diligent in forcing the issue on your end.
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "

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Re: would appreciate advice please
« Reply #2 on: December 02, 2007, 03:15:01 PM »
Hello

I must clarify:
Windows Vista Basic requires a recommended amount of 512MB of RAM
Windows Home Premium requires a recommended amount of 1GB

Secondly:
When you go through the process of reformatting, are you backing up your files, and then putting them on the computer again?
If so, I suspect that this may be a possible virus. <Story telling time>My cousin had a laptop that had a virus (I have it now) that had a virus that caused constant CPU and Hard Drive usage, and basically, melted the hard drive, and cracked her desk in half (yes, it managed to reach out and physically affect something.. quite scary when you think about it). </story telling time>
Anyways, the following questions now appear:
Do you have an Antivirus? Is it updated? Have you done a full scan?

Zylstra

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Re: would appreciate advice please
« Reply #3 on: December 02, 2007, 09:26:58 PM »
User made the following reply via PM:
Thank you for your  reply. I heard recently too that my system memory is insufficient, not even 512mb Embarrassed, i am pretty annoyed  about this. I think they should   let me trade it in for  a better one and i will add the money to it. I also though about uninstalling vista and  buying an xp disk but am not sure if it would be compatible with this system.
  You asked if i backed up and reinstalled the backup after reformatting, no i dont back anything off my laptop up atall, as i have  2 external hardrives, one which is 320 gb, and also back  up important stuff  to dvds. When i have reformated i reinstall the  programs that i use again,  which is very few because  i dont want to  slow it down even more and also i  barely have any vista ready applications, but hundreds of xp  stuff which is annoying.
AS for the virus issue, i have used  a few different ones  including norton  internet security, but since unistalled due to it slowing my system down further, also tried mcafee, kapersky, avg, and  panda, and  i check for updates for which ever i am using at any time on a daily basis and no viruses have ever been found but has been some spyware which has always been  eradicated upon detection.

Thanks again for your input
(My reply follows now:)
I dont think that your speed reduction is caused Vista, but, as for Antivirus:
Make sure that avast! is the only Antivirus scanner on your computer. Once you have done that, go into avast  (by finding it in the Start menu, or right clicking the avast icon in your system tray, and selecting "Start Avast Antivirus")
Once in Avast, Select Menu from the top left hand side, and select "Schedule Boot-time scan"
In "Areas to Scan" select All Local Disks, and select "Scan Archive Files"
Check Advanced options, and change the first action to "Move Infected Files to Chest"
On the second default action (for system files) select Ignore or move for System files.

Select Schedule, and allow Avast to restart your computer. This scan may take a while (Ill take a guess at 1-3 hours)

Why do I recommend this?
It is possible that, through your external drives, you might have contracted a virus.

bethjess

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Re: would appreciate advice please
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2007, 09:16:26 PM »
Thanks for the replies to my message, i do appreciate it alot . I decided to contact the people with whom my insurance is with and asked them where i would stand with regards to my warranty if i were to have more memory fitted and they said as long as its fitted by pc world then there is no problem. So i took my laptop along  this last  monday and had   it upgraded to 2 GB.  THe system  is okay so far   and i can now even listen  to mp3s while on the internet etc something which i could never do before because it stopped  dead.

THanks again

beth