Ironworks Gaming Forum - View Single Post - Attention all compute gurus! HELP NEEDED!

Piestrider · 12-23-2003, 01:28 PM

Okay, here's the problem. My stepdad has a 3 year old HP Pavillion with Windows ME. Now before you say "buy a new computer" hear me out. The other night he left his computer on all night and when he went in to log on that morning the computer was frozen. No Ctrl-alt-del, tried turning the monitor on and off, tried jiggling the mouse, nothing... So he restarted his computer. But when he restarted all sorts of problems started occuring that had never occured before.
Here are the symptoms that I have diagnosed so far:
1) Error message: The IPHLAPI.DLL file cannot start. Check the file to determine the problem.
2) Error message: Rundll32 has caused an erro in KERNEL32.DLL. Rundll32 will now close.
3) Error message: Error loadin nview.dll. A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed.
4) Mouse not working
5) Runing excrutiaingly slow
6) Graphics look like they do in safe mode but computer is in normal mode.

Here's what i've done so far to fix some of the problems. I went into safe mode and uninstalled the mouse. Then i reinstalled it and it's working fine now. Then to fix the computers speed i did a scandisk, a disk cleanup, and a disk defrag. The computer is running noticably smoother now. Then to fix the graphics i went to the control panel-display-settings and i noticed that it was set on 16 colors. So i set it to high color and it prompted me to restart so i did. When i restarted nothing was changed- the colors were still messed up- and now every time i try to go back to control panel-display-setings, the computer locks up.
So far i haven't engaged the DLL problems directly but since there were so many of them we decided that Windows ME had finally just given out. So we went out and purhased Windows XP home edition.
Now my quesion is: should I format the C: drive then install Windows XP, or should i install Windows XP withought formatting the C: Drive.
I know there are many computer gurus here at ironworks and your help in this dillema will be greatly appreciated.
(By the way, the computer is not under warranty any more so any calls to tech support run about $30 an hour! youch!)

12-23-2003, 01:28 PM	#1
Piestrider Zhentarim Guard Join Date: February 25, 2002 Location: Waxahachie TX Age: 38 Posts: 389	Okay, here's the problem. My stepdad has a 3 year old HP Pavillion with Windows ME. Now before you say "buy a new computer" hear me out. The other night he left his computer on all night and when he went in to log on that morning the computer was frozen. No Ctrl-alt-del, tried turning the monitor on and off, tried jiggling the mouse, nothing... So he restarted his computer. But when he restarted all sorts of problems started occuring that had never occured before. Here are the symptoms that I have diagnosed so far: 1) Error message: The IPHLAPI.DLL file cannot start. Check the file to determine the problem. 2) Error message: Rundll32 has caused an erro in KERNEL32.DLL. Rundll32 will now close. 3) Error message: Error loadin nview.dll. A dynamic link library (DLL) initialization routine failed. 4) Mouse not working 5) Runing excrutiaingly slow 6) Graphics look like they do in safe mode but computer is in normal mode. Here's what i've done so far to fix some of the problems. I went into safe mode and uninstalled the mouse. Then i reinstalled it and it's working fine now. Then to fix the computers speed i did a scandisk, a disk cleanup, and a disk defrag. The computer is running noticably smoother now. Then to fix the graphics i went to the control panel-display-settings and i noticed that it was set on 16 colors. So i set it to high color and it prompted me to restart so i did. When i restarted nothing was changed- the colors were still messed up- and now every time i try to go back to control panel-display-setings, the computer locks up. So far i haven't engaged the DLL problems directly but since there were so many of them we decided that Windows ME had finally just given out. So we went out and purhased Windows XP home edition. Now my quesion is: should I format the C: drive then install Windows XP, or should i install Windows XP withought formatting the C: Drive. I know there are many computer gurus here at ironworks and your help in this dillema will be greatly appreciated. (By the way, the computer is not under warranty any more so any calls to tech support run about $30 an hour! youch!) __________________ yes