Laurie wrote:
>I used safe  mode when the problem first appeared, and the computer was
>running  faster than in regular mode, but obviously that is not meant to
>be a  normal thing (running in safe mode all the time).>>

Booting into Safe Mode means that nothing is loaded except the bare
essential system files.

The point of running in Safe Mode is that if the computer is now OK, that
means that XP is trying to load something at normal bootup which isn't
present in Safe Mode.  This could be a specific hardware driver, or more
likely some software which is causing your problems. Each piece of software
may be perfectly OK by itself, but 2 or more programs running together may
conflict.

So, if Safe Mode is OK, that means you have eliminated a lot of
possibilities, and narrowed your search down to just those elements.  From
there, it's usually a process of playing around with Msconfig, starting by
disabling everything, then adding stuff in at each reboot until you find
your rogue software.

That's not quite as messy as it sounds, as you'll usually have a pretty
educated guess as to where the likely conflicts may lie.

Without the XP disk, you may have problems.  It's a seriously bad thing
about most brand-name computers these days---the restore disks they give
you are often very unsatisfactory, and with some brands they even give you
their own sanitized version of Windows, which may in itself create
difficulties further down the track. Usually there's no way you can fully
restore everything from a "Restore" CD without wiping your complete hard drive.

Don Penlington


 From the Beach at Surfers Paradise in sunny Queensland.
Computer tutorials, local scenery,  and other things at my website:
http://users.tpg.com.au/deepend/index1.html

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