Help! Dying laptop!

youtin

youtin

New Member
My friend's 4-year old Compaq laptop seems to be dying out. It hangs every now and then and keeps getting errors (like corrupt files that would'nt copy to a thumb drive). It also needs a certain amount of coaxing and power switch-pressing to turn back on again. It's "allergic" to a lot of programs like Yahoo Messenger and Photoshop CS2. M$Office installation (from CD) also failed, so we downloaded and installed OpenOffice. There's also this dll32 error that keeps popping up and shutting down windows (even after reformat). DVD drive also refuses to play DVDs (data or otherwise) after reformat.

The laptop also makes faint rattling sounds when you shake it.

That's a lot of problems but I hope someone will be able to help out in any way.

The specs: Windows XP professional SP2, 700mhz CPU, 256MB ram
 
I believe it's time for a new Window's installation. If you've got remnance of other installs, malware or whatever else that adds to slowing down your computer- It'll help clear all the clutter. A fresh install will do just about anyone some good. :D
 
Thanks for the ideas ;) But it's been less than a month since we reinstalled Windows in the laptop, so I wasn't thinking of reinstalling. The problems didn't seem to go away after reinstall, I think some even got worse (like DVDs won't play anymore). A test at Driverguide.com reveals that the DVD-ROM driver is up-to-date so I don't think it's a driver problem.

Is it really an OS problem? Is it possible that it was a "bad" reinstall?
 
Like you said... dying laptop...

I'd say just lay it to peace and get a new one. 700. 256. enought to run xp fairly well, but i'd say that's it. all those noises and what not are probably the laptop itself.. and rather try to repair it, i'd say just go for a new one.
 
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