Search for an ISO of the Ultimate Boot CD. That has a decent memtest program on it. Its worth letting it run long enough to do a full test as well - as its quite good at finding obscure errors that simple tests don't spot.
I have not used it for a while, but the prime number search app Prime 95 as it was called:
Why? Having passwords and personal information held by a browser is foolhardy at best. If you have a bad memory for password combos try keeping them on a thumb drive, new installs and cookie cleaning etc will mean you still have all that info to hand. Also, if your pc were compromised then sensitive data can also be kept in a drawer rather than easily accessible to a hacker/Trojan on your HDD.
Personally I have used ccleaner for quite some time, all without issue. Trying not to sound aggressive, but what care exactly are you trying to highlight? I'd be interested to know of any issues you may have had or heard of just so I can be aware myself.
In article , Invisible Man writes
This is way OT for uk.d-i-y, uk.comp.homebuilt would be a better choice.
Do a repair install, preserves all your installed apps and settings.
In article , Adrian Brentnall writes
uk.comp.homebuilt would be more suitable
Bad caps on the motherboard. But before condemning it, run memtest86+ from
Yup if done correctly, and the right option is available.
Can't remember what problem I had with CCleaner. It was a long time ago. If used carefully by someone with a little knowledge it does a lot of things well but it is necessary to keep an eye on what you are doing. Googling CCleaner problems will come up with a few hits.
At present I use bits of:
WinUtilities Auslogics disk defrag CodeStuff Starter Secunia PSI Syncback
(W7 64 bit)
We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Invisible Man saying something like:
Dead simple, and has been for years. Just after an installation, take an image of the C drive with Acronis or similar imaging software. It's a doddle to re-install from the image thereafter, taking as little as 30 minutes.
Never heard of Secunia PSI until now, cheers.
HI All
Thanks for the comments so far....
I have looked in the Event Logs and seem to be getting a fair few warnings (not errors) "error51 on \Harddisk1\D during a paging operation"
I've run Dell's built-in diagnostics and they come up clean (both quick and extended) - also downloaded Hitachi's own disk test suite and that says 'OK'....
I'm wondering if it could be an obscure memory fault - could replace all the system memory for 50 euro or so - might this be a Good Plan ?
Thanks in advance Adrian
Following may help to decode the data section recorded in the event log
Do a check with HDtune and those SMART registers. Some manufacturer HDD testing tools are designed to keep failing customer drives away from their RMA department. When the drive starts reallocating sectors, is the time that I tend to ditch it - however the top line of a diagnostic could still say 'PASS' in that senario.
Problem with that is 1) memory itself rarely fails unless if badly overclocked or over volted and 2) What if it turns out to be the motherboard?
Apply the business case. Sling it.
Interesting.... Thanks
Hmmm. I've just specced out the nearest equivalent Dell machine - and it's best part of ?340 + vat + delivery. The bigger cost to me is that the box would come with Windows7, and various bits of kit hanging off this PC would probably not have drivers available, plus there's the grief of reinstalling software & so on...
I think my business case is best served if I can get this machine running again
Checking up on the memory, it seems that I've got a mix of memory modules installed - 2 x DDR2 PC2-5300, 2 x DDR2 PC2-6400, DDR2 (non-ECC) - so whether that's significant or not ...??
Also contacted my friendly local freelance Dell fixit-man - who's going to call by with a bag of bits, an AVO, and a prayer-mat some time next week - we'll see if he can work some magic for me!
Thanks Adrian
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It can come up with false problems if something has been saved somewhere unexpected but I run it every month. It is amazing how many applications are not updated without a little help and it saves having automatic updates running all the time for heaps of apps.
Wonder -why- you are finding that?..
Yes but thats a differing operating system?.. Are you saying thats got more storage capacity or processing power ?..
As to the different RAM, perhaps not best practice and the PC2-6400 will only run at the slower speed of the PC2-5300, but if it's been working OK up to now then fair enough.
Perhaps the biggest lesson I've learned is not to buy Dell. Love them or loath them, Intel and Microsoft between them brought computing to the masses and drove some form of standardization to the market so that if, for instance, an ATX PSU goes faulty, you can walk into almost any computer shop from Land's End to John O'Groats and buy an industry standard ATX PSU for anything from 15 quid upwards.
When my mate's Dell went faulty, Dell had him over a barrel because the PSU wasn't the industry standard size and shape - he could only get a replacement from Dell and they charged £97.50!! Needless to say, he doesn't buy Dell machines anymore.
Don't just blindly replace the memory, test it first with memtest86+ from
They don't do that anymore with the PSU, but they now have other games afoot as certianly do other companies. Perhaps your friend doesn't buy certain brands of automobile as each manufacturer has custom parts that fail and require expensive replacement?
Where has Tiscali Idiot gone? This was his favourite topic?
FWIW the three classic 'old computer gone flaky' faults I have found after years of managing offices and server rooms full of em are
Fan is clogged.died Hard disk is failing Memory is damaged.
By swapping any one of the three, usually a couple more years of life were gleaned, but really, apart from the case and motherboard, replacing ALL three means there isn't a lot of value left.
Interestingly somewhere in m trawls on cosmic rays, was a statistic that showed the average 4GB ram today was likely to suffer a couple of false bits due to cosmic radiation every month..if that gets 'rewritten to disk' you may be left with a corrupt operating system.
However in general if you are getting errors such as hard disk warnings, its probably a sign that the disk is more or less toast.
RAM errors tend to show up as kernel panics, or really weird behaviour. Disk errors that result in infinite retries to get the data, will lock a machine up.
Now this is not to say that it IS a disk error per se. If you have ageing or high temperature issues you may get bus collisions that show up as errors when disk access is attempted.
In this case I am more inclined to suspect a clogged fan and overheating, or a disk that's dying, than RAM.
So I would start by replacing the disk on the basis its probably past its sell by date anyway, and vacuuming out and checking all the fans.
I have generally found that if the RAM goes flaky, with luck my local PC man can supply a motherboard and new ram for little more than the cost of the old ram, if the machine is more than a few years old.. In fact new motherboard, ram and disk often works out a little over the
100 quid mark for a much faster machine.Reuse the same case, video card, mouse, keyboard,monitor and DVD drive and its a low cost upgrade.. .
Part of the lesson here, is don't buy a box with "enhanced engineering" (i.e. non standard bits) like Dell have a bit of a reputation for. A no name plain box built to your spec has the advantage that you can swap out bits without any difficulty. PSU / Mobo etc can be swapped at low cost for repair or upgrade purposes.
Indeed. If forced down that route, then go for Win 7 Pro - that leaves open the option of using Win 7 XP mode (basically a XP virtual machine you download) that makes getting compatibility with older software that won't run on native Win 7 possible.
So don't buy Dell. Buy from a pc maker who will sell you just the hardware, if you have full install disks available for generic machines.
What actually do you need out of this machine anyway?
My virtualbox XP installion outperforms teh XP machine it replaced..
Indeed - seen plenty caught out that way.
Even with some of their more "standard" chassis you can get caught out because they are targeted at business customers who don't typically tend to expand the systems. So you get easy "tool less" access into the box, and can perhaps install extra RAM easily enough, but find if you want to install a second hard drive there is nowhere to mount the thing in the box, and they have even gone to the bother of having an IDE cable made with only two connectors on it.
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