Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with WindowsXP and PC

Why is my PC shutting down randomly?

desjardins — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:58:26 -0800

My desktop PC is powering down overnight randomly and I can't figure out why. Windows XP Pro SP3. The power options are set to shut off the monitor after 20 minutes, but never to shut off, standby or hibernate. I have turned off automatic updates (it was downloading windows updates and then restarting, so I shut off the auto-updates, and now it's just shutting down without restarting).

I'm not sure what other info is relevant, so I'll try to watch the thread. I only use the desktop every few days, so I'll come back to it after a day and it will have shut down. But sometimes not. It never does this while I'm using it. Nothing else is funky. It's almost exclusively used for web surfing, iTunes and utorrent. It's on a network with other computers in the house (that don't have this problem). Virus and spyware scans are clean.

Maybe we should just throw this clunker out

curagea — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:58:40 -0800

Double whammy! Persistent "ghost" floppy drive, and slow, halting performance, all on my parents' PC. My parents' PC is an HP Pavilion a412n of 5+ years, on Windows XP Professional. It has enough problems for the past year or two, to warrant two questions:

1. Everytime it start it up, whether from a fresh boot, hiberation, or stand-by, I get "Floppy disk(s) fail (40)". Then, I have to press F2 to continue with the booting, which proceeds along fine.

The floppy drive is long gone already. "All right", I thought. "Let's just disable the floppy drive then in the BIOS." Did just that, reboot, yay, the message is gone!

Until the next time I boot it up/revive from hiberation. The message appears again. Then I go back into the BIOS to disable the floppy drive. Lather/rinse/repeat. A couple of times, I rebooted after disabling the non-existent drive, and it STILL gives me the damn message.

What's up here? Some mystery cable in the computer? I didn't think a floppy CABLE alone would cause the problem. Another drive messing with us? We have a ZIP drive and a dual-layer DVD burner (why, I don't know, my dad's stupid sometimes) with no problems. A faulty BIOS? I hate to think that's the case, since it might mean "just frickin' buy a new PC already", and money is tight these days. Help!

2. The PC is always "working". The hard drive light is always blinking/on, except after an HD defrag or when it's off. I've tried spyware scans, virus scans, defragging and Glary Utilities for the temp files and whatever. However, I don't use Glary's Registry cleaner, since from past experience, any Register cleaner eventually screwed up something that snowballs into a schizophrenic PC. Also, I've looked up on "unnecessary" Windows services and tweaked those too. Nope.

Surfing the Internet is sluggish too, but not bandwidth-wise. Usually, after clicking a link, the PC kind of lags before continuing on. This happens in IE7. I could try to get my mom and pop to convert to Firefox, but it's hard to teach these old dogs new tricks. They tried Firefox once and said they didn't like it *gasp*. I doubt they'll like Opera either.

FWIW, it's a Celeron processor, which I know is pretty weak to begin with. But in the PC's early days, it was preppy. Net surfing was a snap. Now, everytime I'm by my mom's side, she complains about how slow the PC is.

My parents do the most basic of computing basics: read email, write documents and spreadsheets, once in a while listen to someone's podcast or watch YouTube for business. No one else uses the PC. The HD is only a quarter full.

So, what's the verdict? Can I prep this old PC into shape again without reinstalling (did that once, didn't help matters)? What other cleanups am I missing, if any?

No "buy a new PC" or "get a Mac" or "get Linux" advice, please. Money's tight, and like I said: I can't teach those two old dogs new tricks.

Why does sound playback "drag" sporadically on my PC?

steeb2er — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 07:03:07 -0800

Why does sound playback "drag" sporadically on my recently built (decently powerful) PC? In the spring I built a new PC. I'm using the on-board sound card. Specs below:

- GIGABYTE GA-P35-DS3L LGA 775 Intel P35 ATX All Solid Capacitor Intel Motherboard
- EVGA 256-P2-N768-A1 GeForce 8600GTS SSC 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card
- Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Allendale 2.4GHz LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor Model BX80557E4600
- Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD2500KS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
- CORSAIR XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model TWIN2X2048-6400C5DHX

When I playback basically anything (MP3s, DVDs, Youtube videos, Myspace music) the sound has a tendency to drag. I'm not doing any intense processing (90+% idle) or hardcore downloading. Its not my internet connection, since it happens with MP3s on my comp as well. There doesn't seem to be any connection to activities (ie. the dragging happens randomly, not while opening a new browser window or something along those lines).

I've updated the driver (the latest is from 09/2008). I'm running XP Professional SP3. Firefox 3.0.3. Windows Media Player (same problem in iTunes and WinAMP).

Any suggestions?

I'm hoping for a free answer (not "buy a new soundcard"). Thanks!

Going from an old PC to a new iMac, migration possible?

mathowie — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:05:13 -0800

I'm finally retiring my dad's virus-laden PC running XP with a new iMac. Is there any way to migrate his old settings from the PC over to a VMWare instance of XP running on the iMac in case he must use a PC-only app after the upgrade to a new machine? My dad has been doing the horrifying thing of running a PC for the past few years and about every six months, when his PC gets overrun with viruses and adware, buys a new $500 PC running XP like his last computer, and the process repeats. I swear the last time I checked out his PC there were several weird taskbar apps running, one of which was in chinese (he can neither speak nor read it).

To ease the transition, I figured installing XP under VMWare would be a good option, in case there is one last PC app or game he needs to use occasionally.

But then I was thinking, even though it may be riddled with viruses/adware -- is there a way to migrate all the apps and settings from the old PC to a new VMWare XP instance? I use VMWare only rarely to test out websites in IE/PC, but I've never tried anything like this and I don't know how sophisticated the Microsoft apps are for migration of apps and profiles and such.

Has anyone ever done something like this?

Send me to computer jail

snowjoe — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 23:54:07 -0800

PC Help again again. I have an old pc with windows 2000 server installed on a 20gig SCSI drive. I am trying to install a 40 gig IDE drive that has xp on it. I don't need windows 2000 server anymore so I want the computer to boot into xp but it isn't happening for me. What am I doing wrong? It is a D850EMV2 intel motherboard with 512kb of that super expensive ram. A custom built computer, not a brand name.

I removed the scsi card and uplugged the scsi drive and then plugged in the IDE drive. The cd drive was connected to the secondary IDE connector so I moved that to the primary connector and connected the middle part of the connector to the ide hard drive and the end to the cd drive. I also moved the led light switched to the motherboard from the scsi card. I get a failure to boot error message. I did nothing with the bios. I am not a computer guy but i sure would like to make this work. What am I doing wrong?

I put everything back the way it was and it boots into windows 2000 server fine. By the way I also tried to format the scsi drive but the os wouldn't let me.

Shouldn't I be able to do this?

PC won't recognize iPod

alona — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 03:03:29 -0800

My PC won't recognize my iPod. What can I do? I've tried everything on the apple website, and I've gone through several metafilter iPod trouble posts. Sadly, none of them seem to apply as in all cases, the problem seemed to be iTunes not recognizing the device, and not the whole computer.

So, I have a dandy iPod video, 30gb. I purchased it in December when I was in North America and I used my brother's laptop to upload songs. I have about 30 songs on there now.
And now I have app. 4GB of songs in my iTunes library at home and no way of getting it onto my iPod.

When I plug my pod in, it charges, but it doesn't even appear as a device in My Computer.

I have a suspicion that this has something to do with the fact that my computer's already recognized my copy of Windows XP as not being genuine.

What can I do to get my computer to recognize my iPod? Help, I'm desperate!

Will my old Canon printer work with Win XP?

NorthCoastCafe — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 14:34:48 -0800

Printer filter/ I'm downsizing to travel cross country and would like to use an old Canon bubble jet (BJ10ex) with my new Dell laptop running XP. Does anyone know if this won't work? I have to wait for a USB Parallel converter cable to arrive to test it. Are there other compatibility problems I need to know about?

XP install: how do I find my sound card's drivers? And what programs do I really need?

twine42 — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 15:23:50 -0800

Laptop Clean XP Install:
1] My (on board?) sound card is unrecognised. How do I find out what drivers to use?

2] What programs do you really think I need? I already have VNC, VLC, Firefox, Thunderbird and AVG installed. What else should I add? (Freeware/OS appriciated but not needed.) VNC = Remote access program
VLC = DVD player type thing
AVG = AntiVirus

Shared drives between PC and Mac

pieoverdone — Sat, 07 Aug 2004 22:15:30 -0800

I have a PC with WinXP Pro. She has an iBook with Mac OS X. Together they ~~fight crime~~ share a router. e:\ is where I shove all my ~~porn~~ music. How can I make this available to her to copy what she wants to her machine or her ipod?

Should I replace my hard drive or buy a new computer?

kirkaracha — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:40:53 -0800

I have a PC that I use to test web sites on Windows browsers (my main computer's a Mac). I tried to upgrade to Windows XP, and the XP installer seems to have wrecked the hard drive. Should I replace my hard drive or buy a new computer? [sketchy details inside] I had the Windows XP installer erase and format the drive. I get paging errors (or something like that) during installation. The PC's an old Compaq Presario I got for free. Does it make sense to replace the hard drive, or should I just get a cheap Dell? (And if I want Windows XP, should I buy it with the computer or install it myself?)