Posts by DoctorWHO

Worse case scenario....then boot up off your windows xp cd and choose to repair.

By your PC freezing I gather you mean that you do not get any blue screens.

If a Clean Install of windows XP does not fix your problem then I can venture to guess that one of your hardware components is failing or dead.
The best thing you could do is re-install windows XP on a MIMINUM amount of hardware....which means just the System board and CPU with ram and video card. Apply all the drivers (including motherboard drivers) and patches.
Then switch off the PC and add the sound card (or enable the sound chip if onboard). Do not install any other hardware, eg: modem or network card.
Try to run your games now, and if your PC still freezes try a different video card or a different ram stick. Basically find the faulty piece that is making your PC freeze.
No need to mention that heat is also a common cause of PCs freezing.....so find out what is not being cooled properly or if a heatsink or fan has slightly come loose.

Cheerio

I once decided to take home with me one of these PCs to attempt a repair and was dumbfounded when I could easily browse the net thru my shared broadband...but dialing with the modem still did not work.

If the Damage to Windows XP is severe...but you are able to boot into windows at any stage or by using an older restore point....then its worth trying a full repair by going to START....RUN and typing sfc /scannow

This will ask you for your original XP CD and will replace any altered KEY SYSTEM files back to the originals working ones...it will also restore windows to a pre-service pack state so you will have to re run the SP1 file.

Cheerio

How about once the BIOS and the Cabling is all in right order......try booting off a boot floppy. If that works in DOS but not in windows its definately a registry problem.
I suggest you try this 1st before you go and mess around in the registry.

Sorry...apparently the people that made MSN do not want you to login as "appear offline" but that is for a good reason afterall, because everyone would want to login as offline and it defeats the purpose of the messenger program.

Cheers TKS :)

I have not tried pinging the default gateway...but I have tried 2 different ISPs...all of which connected at 44k or higher.

When it comes to Poor lines.....long extension cables and cheap ISPs the best solution has always been a HARDWARE external modem.

Cheap internal modems are Usually software modems......Lucent Winmodems come to mind.....and rely HEAVILY on your CPU and your Operating Software.

There are a few hardware internal modems but most new internal modems will be software.

I have been doing Tech Support for several years now and I can usually solve most OS or Internet related problems, but there is 1 problem I have found no solution for as yet.

When a PC can connect to the ISP through a Dial-UP modem and stay connected, but is unable to browse.
Also MSN...ICQ and any messaging program is also unable to connect.
In a command prompt IPConfig tells me the computer has received an IP address
and is not generating one randomly, but pinging either domain names like www.google.com or pinging IP addresses comes back with no reply.
Pinging 127.0.0.1 tells me that TCP/IP is not at fault.
Changing modem drivers,recreating the dialup account in inetwiz with a new name, removing and re-installing TCP/IP and/or updating Internet explorer does not help in any way.
I have noticed this problem in ALL flavours of windows and I am usually forced to fix it with a clean install for the sake of saving time and my sanity.
In windows XP a rollback or a system restore also is unable to help, and as usual the client is unable to tell me what has happened or changed on the PC to cause this problem to begin with. (If I knew what causes it I might be able to find a solution)
This problem is by no means common......it is actually quite rare...but I still am not capable …