Hi there folks. I had a look around the forums, but couldn't find the answer to this one, so thought I'd put up a message to see if any one's got any bright ideas.
My girlfriend's got an 18-month old Dell Inspiron 1000 with standard specs, though the RAM reported in 'System' is 448MB but I'm guessing that's got something to do with the onboard graphics...?
Anyway, recently she's been having problems with it being unable to complete the Win XP boot as it can't find a config file in the system32 folder. Though if she unplugs it, takes the battery out, puts the battery back in and plugs it back into the mains and then boots, it finds it.
Also, she's been having problems with Open Office randomly quitting on her, without reporting an error, and if she restarts the laptop after this, it reports that the system has recovered from a serious error (in that oh so vague way that XP does).
So, any ideas?
My initial thought (as the laptop did similar nonsense to this before XP was reinstalled after a format) is that maybe the HDD is on the way out. Though others have said that they think the RAM is a problem.
The trouble is, using a RAM checker and leaving it to run overnight produces no errors in the morning, even after a few thousand cycles. Using chkdsk has no errors either. I have yet to physically inspect the HDD, but from what she's told me there's no random clicking noises at start up.
Also, when the laptop is up and running, it is incredibly slow at doing anything. Having WMP10, Open Office Writer and Firefox open at the same time generally reduces everything to a snail's pace. It also did similar tricks under Ubuntu, when that was on the laptop (don't ask).
So, I'm open to all ideas or suggested remedies for the problems.
Thanks,
Tim