Alienware Area 51-m7700 laptop
Hmmm. I don't have personal experience with this brand, but a brief
Google search seems to imply they have more than their fair share of
unhappy campers.
Pentium 4 CPU 3.8GHz
2 GB RAM
60 GB Storage
nVidia GeForce Go 6800 Ultra
I believe they installed software & programs poorly.
Since I don't have access to your PC, I can't really confirm this. But
if there is absolutely nothing wrong with your hardware and a fresh
reinstall (through their Restore) gives you problems right off the bat,
your belief could very well be justified. Perhaps you can do what Peter
said: uninstall any and all bloatware. Very often, that does the trick,
and maybe that's all you need to do. A more radical approach would be to
obtain or create an XP installation disk (There should be a Certificate
of Authenticity sticker on the bottom of your laptop. You would use the
Product Key from there.) If you cannot obtain a generic OEM XP Pro
installation CD (there is no need to purchase one; you already have a
license to run XP Pro on your laptop!), you should be able to make your
own, as long as you have the i386 folder. Here are the instructions:
http://www.howtohaven.com/system/createwindowssetupdisk.shtml
I don't deal
with their tech support any longer because they have done more damage
than help.
I'm confident the problems are software-related. In addition to the
glitches that came with the laptop (programs close on their own; error
messages suddenly appearing indicating the program has to close;
programs freezing ...), it's now taking longer to boot up (5 mins).
Norton deactivated System Restore and the Windows Defrag program
because it has its own programs. However, those aren't working now.
Norton is a train wreck. I always uninstall it and use their special
Removal Tool:
http://service1.symantec.com/Support/tsgeninfo.nsf/docid/2005033108162039
There has been a problem with the 10-in-1 card reader since the laptop
arrived, but that is the only hardware problem I know of.
At this point, I've purchased a new desktop (non-Alienware) and want
to keep the laptop as a second device.
I feel confident that it just needs a clean install. I don't want to
start off looking for hardware issues when I'm not certain how much
I'll be using it. If that proves to be the case, I can address that
later. But there obviously are software/registry/programming
problems that have to be addressed first.
Thanks for your interest, Daave.
YW and good luck.
One final idea. Boot off a live CD like Knoppix or UBCD4Win. If all is
fine, then you can safely rule out hardware issues.