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I don't know too much about the different levels of video cards - but I'm 99.99% sure any video card would work with your Dell as long as it's PCI based - not their $450 card. That's pretty rediculous - reminds me of the time the Dell Laptop seminar people at college told my brother that Dell's only work with Dell Printers - uh huh...

definatly sounds like a hardware problem - PSU, RAM, CPU, Video Card are most likely the cause Do the fans start up and stay on, or do they quit? Will the computer stay on with the screen blank, or does it eventually shut itself off? If it continues to run like normal without a visual I'd say it's the video card - check to see that it's firmly in it's slot (if it's onboard vid you might just need to buy a new card)

At the computer shop I work at we have a copies of all Microsoft OS's 95, 98, 98 SE, ME, 2000 Pro, XP SP1, XP SP2, XP Pro, and so on. Whenever someone needed the OS reinstalled (about half the jobs) we would do so with OUR disc, unless they had their recovery CD. CD's are not tied to keys, so you can use any CD with any legitimate key

Worst case - borrow a copy, don't activite it, and make a call to Indian Tech support to read off a 20some digit number to a computer than to a person. I've only had to do this a couple hundred times at work, lol! Good tip for anyone, if you know you are going to need to talk to someone at Microsoft and you get a machine, just say HELP and it'll ask if you need help then transfer you - this happens alot with reformatting eMachines

Burn some CD's with what files you need, enough drivers to get online, and make sure you have copies of your software to install once the hard drive is wiped. If you have your XP (or any other OS) CD reformatting is the way to go, and it's not difficult at all.

Trial by error

Open up My Computer, right click on the drive, and then change the name at the top under the general tab

K & N! Just like the commericals!

Ditto on the crap - go with the cannon

Obviously turning up the CPU is going to work it harder, adding to the possibility of burning it out. If you're friend has enough money to buy a new chip when you wreck it he should have just bought a better one in the first place

YEAH!

Just out of curiousity - what would be a good book to read/a course to take that would be good for the A+ test? I have some pretty good knowledge as far as how to build and fix computers, but I'd need something to learn all of those trivial numbers

Lol, I just learned how to do this today for school work and just showed it to my pop - I've gotten the picture to work in photoshop but haven't tried Paint yet, that could be your problem

I'd uhh, get a new motherboard, no wait - it's AOL's fault call Time Warner Welcome to the club of zillions of people who forget Admin passwords

The world may never know... For all you know a tiny piece of metal was touching the wire or something stupid like magical nomes who invade computers during the nome off-season and bite holes in IDE cables

Like a physical control center in the CD drive bay or a software program? I'm not quite sure what you mean by dashboard so...

My enclousre was plug and play for XP but it came with a mini disk with 98 drivers Check alldrivers.com user - all password - drivers

My boss told me that SATA is good for working with large files, such as video editing

Sixpac, tech is one thing where being a "young'un" has an advantage!!!! Liz <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ha ha, I'm 16 - been working with computers since about third grade, work at a computer store, fix neighbors' computers, fix my own constantly, and I've never needed to know the voltage of a parallel port (random A+ questions!)

If enough people conplain - maybe you can get an RMA on it

It's about time for me to do a clean install - as soon as I get my external backup hard drive back from my brother

Thanks a lot!

I've been working on lights inside my car lately, just hooking up neons to a 12 volt source than a ground, and I was wondering if anyone knew what the different colored wires on a 4 pin connection from a power supply were? All I need is a 12 volt and a ground to a light to get the lights to work

Logfile of HijackThis v1.99.1 Scan saved at 4:18:42 PM, on 9/4/2005 Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600) MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP2 (6.00.2900.2180) Running processes: C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\csrss.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe C:\Program Files\Creative\SBLive\AudioHQ\AHQTB.EXE C:\WINDOWS\System32\e

I'll do the HJT log - thanks for the help