UN BE LEEVABLE
After four insanely unproductive hours in some fashion dealing with Dell Tech "Support" I am no nearer an answer to this weirdness than I was. Only when I become convinced the hard drive is at fault will I try this route again. Meanwhile, I see there is a "remote assistance" tool in the Dell Folder on the hard drive that seems to offer to let me let someone knowledgable into my system to look under the hood. It apparently contacts them by email and sets up the computer-to-computer connection. I've never used it before.
Any experience with this? Any suggestions for persons or companies that might provide this higher level of knowledge and maybe some actual help?
The hard drive won't let me use the Windows Scan Disk or Norton Disk Doctor to complete the scan, much less do any repairs. (from a fresh boot the scan starts and hangs 3/4 thru). I'm at the end of my rope. Not to mention the cramping hand and calloused ear and WORN patience with Dell's MUSAK...which is also the language spoken by their service reps I talked to this morning!
Comments
Remote Assistance is a feature built in to Windows XP. Since you have a high speed connection you should be able to let somebody poke around your system remotely. I've never done it but I assume there is a set up Wizard in Windows to walk you through the set up.
Hard drives are cheap enough that I'd probably just put a second drive in the computer, and move my important data over to it first. Then you can reinstall Windows on the first drive or do whatever you need to to isolate and fix the problem without endangering your important files.
Posted by: Chris | June 29, 2004 1:30 PM
I'll avoid my standard answer whenever I see someone struggling with Windows (any version) although, as a photographer, you'd fare much better with a Mac.
But since Windows is the system you have you might want to consider Trojan Hunter, a program that picks up the trojans Norton and other anti-virus programs too often miss. Some of your symptoms sound like a hidden file trojan.
Doug
Posted by: Doug Thompson | June 29, 2004 1:38 PM
When it all over Fred, think of an Apple. I have found it so wonderful not to be exposed to all the bad things that come with MSFT. There is also a small Apple community locally which is great for real help ie from a friend!
I tried the Dell thing and got badly lost
Posted by: Robert Paterson | June 29, 2004 2:21 PM
I think Doug's right, sounds like a trojan. Are you running Ad Aware and SpyBot daily? If not download and run SpyBot it may find it.
If not, go to merijn.org, download and run "Hijack This" and send me a notepad txt copy of the resulting scan via email.
Posted by: feste | June 29, 2004 6:25 PM
Have you tried running the chkdsk program at startup?
click start >> Run >> "chkdsk /r"
it will say something about not having funn access to the files, and would you like to schedule it to be run on the next reboot?
tell it yes.
that will check for errors on the drive and hopefully fix any it finds.
I feel like there is a way to get defrag to run at startup as well, but I haven't found it yet.
Back in a bit if I can figure it out..
--Jeremiah
Posted by: Jeremiah | June 29, 2004 10:06 PM
I meant, "Full access" not "Funn access" lol
Posted by: Jeremiah | June 29, 2004 10:09 PM
You can boot into DOS via Safe mode and run DEFRAG from the command line.
Posted by: feste | June 29, 2004 11:24 PM