Clark said:
I have a 1 year old Dell laptop with XP Pro and Office
2003. For the past few months programs stop responding.
It is real bad with IE 6 and Outlook 2003. Now starting
to do it with FrontPage 2003. The problem is definitely
getting worse.
It started with IE 6. The MS Support website had a page
that said this would be corrected in a future service pack
for IE. So I didn't do anything about it when it
started. But now it is spreading to other apps so I
suspect I have a corrupted XP.
I am considering formatting and reinstalling XP and all my
apps. But man, that is a lot of work.
What other options are there? Any way to fix a corrupted
XP besides a reinstall?
What about System Restore? I will have to go back several
months but maybe that is better than a full reinstall? Or
is it?
Will I have problems with that cursed activation if I have
to reinstall XP or Office 2003?
Try cleaning house first:
Backup your important files.. Ones you created. Burn them to CD.. That way
if you go through all of this and it DOES mess something up (it shouldn't,
but lots of things that do bad things SHOULDN'T..) - you are OKAY with
that - the instructions for a full reinstall are at the bottom. hahah
Turn on that firewall...
http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsXP/home/using/howto/homenet/icf.asp
If you are getting "Messenger Service" popups - this will also remedy those.
Make sure you have all the updates (critical) installed from:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
(Scan for updates, Review and Install)
Get rid of the spy/ad/mal-ware..
(Yes - using MORE than one of these.. I recommend at least the first
three.)
Spybot Search and Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/
Lavasoft AdAware
http://www.lavasoft.de
Hijack This!
(For browser Hijacks - also look into CWS Shredder)
http://mjc1.com/mirror/hjt/
And Assortment of Others:
http://www.merijn.org/downloads.html
After you cleanup your PC somewhat of spy/ad/mal-ware, verify your antivirus
software is updated and run a full scan of your computer. If you have no
antivirus software - get one NOW!
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php
Empty your Temporary Internet Files and shrink the size it stores to about
80-120MB..
- Open ONE copy of Internet Explorer.
- Select TOOLS -> Internet Options.
- Under the General tab in the "Temporary Internet Files" section, do the
following:
- Click on "Delete Cookies" (click OK)
- Click on "Settings" and change the "Amount of disk space to use:" to
something between 80MB and 120MB. (Betting it is MUCH larger right now.)
- Click OK.
- Click on "Delete Files" and select to "Delete all offline contents"
(the checkbox) and click OK. (If you had a LOT, this could take 2-10 minutes
or more.)
- Once it is done, click OK, close Internet Explorer, re-open Internet
Explorer.
Uninstall any software you do not use often/ever. (If you have something
installed but never use it, uninstall it. If you go through Control
Panel -> Add/Remove Programs and see things you seldom if ever use, it is to
your advantage to remove it.)
Update all of your hardware drivers (find the manufacturers of your video
card, motherboard, sound card, modem, network card and so on - go to their
web pages, look for Windows XP drivers there and download/install the newest
ones.)
And follow Microsoft's advice (you have in most ways if you did the
above..):
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/
If, after all that, you still think you need to re-install from scratch to
actually do the cleanup (everything above is suggested to be done often
after the cleanup as well), then:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/cleanxp.htm