CandleInTheDark

Good morning to the more technologically inclined folks of TFP. I was hoping for a little help regarding an issue I experienced yesterday and today.

Yesterday, my girlfriend wanted to transfer pictures from some flash media to our computer. She found the computer frozen, and was unable to open My Computer. She restarted the computer, which I believe brought up the Safe Mode screen, and opted to boot it in Normal Mode (Windows XP).

It booted to the WindowsXP loading bar screen, then turned blank with no change. We repeated several attempts in Safe Mode, and attempted to Load a Previous System Restore Point, all with the safe results. I was beginning to consider a Destructive System Restore, but one last attempt at a restart worked.

I restarted the computer again, later, and found the same result, though I had to restart much less. Now today I have begun to peruse the System Tools, and My Computer, attempting to access our Flash Media, and both have resulting in Non-Responsive programs.

Disk Defragementer will not load.
My Computer will load, but will not load drives.
My Documents is functional.

The only recent installation was for SharpDevelop 3.1, TortoiseSVN, and FxCop, as I have begun to teach myself Visual Basic .Net. I've been running Console applications that I have programmed as part of my exercises.

Can anyone offer some insight?

__________________
Where there is doubt there is freedom.

Manic_Skafe

System specs? Any new hardware installations?

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CandleInTheDark

No new hardware installations.

Athlon 64 Processor 3500+
512MB DDR Ram
200GB HDD
Integrated graphics.

Update: Useing RUN, I can access My Computer and the drives. How ever, using an Explorer window from the Start Menu > My Computer short cut still results in a frozen Windows Explore window.

__________________
Where there is doubt there is freedom.

Vigilante

Given the age of the machine, check for bulging capacitors on the motherboard. Typically the ones around the CPU socket will fail first. One cap that feeds the RAM is a common one as well.

I say this because often sudden explorer issues indicate this failure.

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Canine

try this:
First, hit ctrl+shift+esc, tell me if it brings up the task manager or not. Close it out if it does. Then:
restart the computer and hold the F8 key as it starts up until it asks you if you want to boot safe mode.
Choose the Safe Mode with Command Prompt. In the command prompt, type
followed by

then see if everything works like it should in safe mode.

this is just a test to check if malware is the problem.

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CandleInTheDark

Thanks for you help.

Yesterday, I found I could use the browse feature using Run to access the drives. It still would not read Flash media unless inserted into the camera and connected by USB.

Today, I was going to follow Canine's advice, but check Explorer again and found it working.

__________________
Where there is doubt there is freedom.