Couple of windows problems

[djm227]

Ive had my computer built for about 6 months, and most of its been great (first build). BUt right away i had a couple problems with windows, which i am not unfamiliar with, but i have never seen these problems before. At first they werent that bad, but now they have gotten worse and are getting real annoying. If anyone has any suggestions that i could do besides re-installing it that would be great, thanks. The problems are:

-When logging off or turning off computer it freezes on the blue screen which just says "Windows Xp", even before the "logging off" and "saving your settings" and all that, it just freezes and wont unfreeze. This happens every time i try to log off or turn off my computer.

-On initial log in, start menu is usually un-clickable. Meaning it is there, and all icons and tabs appear, but when clicked on it makes the "ding" sound, and nothing can be clicked. I can repair this by using Taskbar Repair Tool Plus, after every times it happens, but still, its annoying and i dont like thinking somthings seriously wrong with my start menu.

-A minor thing that has been there since the initial boot of my computer, is in music folders, the side panel where it says "play all" doesnt work and never did. This is minor and i really dont care if it gets fixed or not, i just thought id through it in there incase someone knew how to fix it.

again, thanks for the help. I really want to try to avoid re-installing windows. I should have repaired them after installing windows, i guess i just didnt think they would get worse.

[AnotherMuggle]

Firstly, why are you so keen to not reinstall Windows? To me it sounds like you are having a lot of issues and a fresh reinstall would likely be a quick fix for all of them.

There's possibly a hardware conflict of some kind going on, to cause your system to not shutdown correctly. Have you installed the latest drivers for everything from the manufacturer's websites, rather than from provided CD's?

[djm227]

i dont want to re-install because, at least in the past, i understood that it would erase all files, and when i did it to my old computer thats exactly what it did.

As far as installing new drivers, i havnt thought of that, and i'll try it, thanks for the help.

[AnotherMuggle]

New drivers may not fix the other issues but it might solve the shutdown problem.

A reinstall would certainly remove all files and settings from your drive, so if you did choose to take that path, ensure you have anything you want to keep backed up.

[djm227]

i have two hard drives in my computer, so if i re-install windows, but back-up everything on my secondary hard drive first, ill be able to access it after the re-install right?

[AnotherMuggle]

Correct

[djm227]

alright sweet, thanks again for the help

[glc]

Disconnect the secondary drive to do the reinstall, reconnect it when it's done.

[AnotherMuggle]

Yep, that's a good suggestion. If the drive is disconnected then you won't mistakenly overwrite your backups