Crashing and Reinstalling Windows

[ubiam0ribioculus]

Usually my laptop works well, and when it doesn't i give it to my boyfriend to fix, but it turns out Xp keeps crashing and i know its overloaded so i figured i'd wipe the hardrive (i got what i want saved) and reinstall XP office standard FS&T. but it doesn't seem to cooperate, when i start up it won't let me in safe mode without freezing and it regular mode i can't get past entering my product ID. so if anyone can help with any harddrive erasing?
thank you so much.
Samantha

[kev7555]

There are a lot of reasons a system may crash.

Formatting the drive and starting over is one option (and it sounds like you have already decided to do that) but the root of the problem may lie deeper than the operating system itself (hardware failures, your computer habits, etc).

To get any help here you will need to provide a bit more information. Read the forum introduction and frequently asked questions for a guide as to how to get help the quickest.

What kind of computer? Are you using anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, etc? Getting access in order to format the drive may require some cleaning, depending on what MAY have infected the system.


-Kev

[QuickSilver]

Do you have a quick restore type disk for it?

[ubiam0ribioculus]

okay, sorry for the lack of information. I have a Dell Latitude Pent. II. I heard that maybe AOL could be the problem but i think that it's unlikely. I also have norton which is always up to date. I run spybot almost daily, and i have had some problems with a lot of spyware, i.e. CWS, (which i think i removed...) but lately it has been at almost a standstill slowness, and nothing will run. If i try to open internet explorer it either will take about 10 minutes or ill be overrun with porn popups (again, no idea how those got on there.) Sooo i thought about erasing the hardrive, but like you said Kev, the problem could be deeper, and nor do i know the first step about reinstalling drivers and everything else, nor am i a professional at BIOS. Also, when i tried the MS-DOS prompt, i realized the 'a' nor the 'q' key works, which makes it impossible to type in the CD key, or the word 'format'. i did the usual of elimating stuff from the startup through msconfig, rn spybot again cleared trash and cookies and Temp files, nothings working. right now i have XP, but its XP office, but im trying to install XP office for students and teachers...
any ideas would be much appricated.
Samantha

[z3frog]

hmm... xp office? theres xp home and xp professional... but no xp office i think. did u have this confused with the microsoft office application suite?

[ubiam0ribioculus]

thank you so much for that, because i figured out what the problem was. well now i feel dumb, but thanks a lot.

[Cricket]

Originally Posted by z3frog hmm... xp office? theres xp home and xp professional... but no xp office i think. did u have this confused with the microsoft office application suite?

Office XP was available a few years ago, but it's been replaced by Office 2003.

Originally Posted by ubiam0ribioculus thank you so much for that, because i figured out what the problem was. well now i feel dumb, but thanks a lot.

What was the problem and the solution?

It's customary to post what you did to resolve the issue so people following the thread will know what was going on.

Cricket

[ubiam0ribioculus]

im sorry about that. i was getting them confused. I borrowed what i thought, and what he said was the XP install, but it turned out it was the software pack. so now i just have to get my hands on the xp install... but when i was trying to type something on there i realized my 'a' and 'q' keys aren't working... its a laptop, not a pc, and the buttons aren't stuck, they just aren't showing up. this happened once before, but upon restarting they worked again, but this time it isn't. I'd like to run spybot or norton but its too slow right now to handle either of those...

[Panama Red]

Originally Posted by ubiam0ribioculus im sorry about that. i was getting them confused. I borrowed what i thought, and what he said was the XP install, but it turned out it was the software pack. so now i just have to get my hands on the xp install... but when i was trying to type something on there i realized my 'a' and 'q' keys aren't working... its a laptop, not a pc, and the buttons aren't stuck, they just aren't showing up. this happened once before, but upon restarting they worked again, but this time it isn't. I'd like to run spybot or norton but its too slow right now to handle either of those...

You might want to check what programs are running in the background on startup and limit them to only the essential few to run the system. That will help speed things up a bit. Go to 'run', type 'msconfig', ok. Click the start up tab and see what's there. If you need a reference to tell what each program does, here's a good one.

http://www.sysinfo.org/startupinfo.html

Another way to run those programs is in Safe Mode. Use the F8 key on start up to get in to Safe.