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#21
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze
On Wed, 14 Dec 2011 16:01:23 +0000 (UTC), Boris
wrote: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. Like some others, I think it has to do with drivers. I can't say which right now but if it were me, I'd start looking outside of Dell for specific drivers. The fact that you have an exclamation point makes it obvious. |
#22
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze
Boris wrote in
: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I found the driver on the Intel site, and it is ver 7.2.2.1006, that same one I installed from the Dell site. Still no luck |
#23
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
Boris wrote in
: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. |
#24
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
Boris wrote in
. 18: Boris wrote in : "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: "BillW50" wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. BTW, Christoher, I did disable "Tap to Click". g |
#25
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
On Dec 14, 11:02*pm, Boris wrote:
BTW, Christoher, I did disable "Tap to Click". g RnR should be given credit for his astuteness! And Bill...well, he often goes-off on tangents! ;^) |
#26
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote:
wrote in : wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time. |
#27
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
Christopher Muto wrote in
: On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote: wrote in : wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time. Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site and noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum). I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back. After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like it, make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that describes what each file is for. |
#28
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
On 12/15/2011 11:22 AM, Boris wrote:
Christopher wrote in : On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote: wrote in : wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time. Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site and noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum). I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back. After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like it, make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that describes what each file is for. oh don't get me started on the dell community forum... they actually delete users posts without notice. and they sometimes just edit them too because they don't like a word that you might have used. i understand that it is dell's forum and since they sponsor it they can do whatever they want with it, but the favoritism they show for certain people, the uneven way they apply their own rules, and the sleazy way they edit and delete posting without notice or explanation completely undermines the purpose of such a forum as well as its credibility as a place to exchange ideas. they built it to off load some of support work from their paid staff to unpaid participants, and then they staff it with people to police it and say it is only a users to user forum. but then the staff that is there to moderate and police it can't help themselves and randomly interject with offers to help people which usually do not yield any positive results and shows favoritism. what a complete mess. i recently wrote to dell about suggesting that they take a hard look at the dell community forum's management, its policies, its uneven enforcement of the policies, its moderators, and the abuses of obsessive compulsive contributors. it is overrun by a handful of well intentioned regulars who post so much that they don't even realize how jaded they have become and speak in lingo and shortcuts that the typical one off novice visitor does not understand. then it takes them four or five additional posts to get across what they could have done in one if they were not so sloppy and cavalier in their initial reply. i think dell should kill the dell community forum altogether, but at very least they should limit users posts to just a few per day. then perhaps people would spend more time contemplating a reply and fine tuning it instead of just polluting the place with a large volume of meaningless, useless, and half baked answers. ps. good to hear you solve your freezing problem. a far better outcome than reloading the system. |
#29
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
Christopher Muto wrote in
: On 12/15/2011 11:22 AM, Boris wrote: Christopher wrote in : On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote: wrote in : wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time. Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site and noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum). I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back. After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like it, make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that describes what each file is for. oh don't get me started on the dell community forum... Too late. they actually delete users posts without notice. and they sometimes just edit them too because they don't like a word that you might have used. i understand that it is dell's forum and since they sponsor it they can do whatever they want with it, but the favoritism they show for certain people, the uneven way they apply their own rules, and the sleazy way they edit and delete posting without notice or explanation completely undermines the purpose of such a forum as well as its credibility as a place to exchange ideas. they built it to off load some of support work from their paid staff to unpaid participants, and then they staff it with people to police it and say it is only a users to user forum. but then the staff that is there to moderate and police it can't help themselves and randomly interject with offers to help people which usually do not yield any positive results and shows favoritism. what a complete mess. i recently wrote to dell about suggesting that they take a hard look at the dell community forum's management, its policies, its uneven enforcement of the policies, its moderators, and the abuses of obsessive compulsive contributors. it is overrun by a handful of well intentioned regulars who post so much that they don't even realize how jaded they have become and speak in lingo and shortcuts that the typical one off novice visitor does not understand. then it takes them four or five additional posts to get across what they could have done in one if they were not so sloppy and cavalier in their initial reply. i think dell should kill the dell community forum altogether, but at very least they should limit users posts to just a few per day. then perhaps people would spend more time contemplating a reply and fine tuning it instead of just polluting the place with a large volume of meaningless, useless, and half baked answers. ps. good to hear you solve your freezing problem. a far better outcome than reloading the system. I stopped going to the dell forums many years ago, when they first began making changes. I've probably only been there 2-3 times since, as a last resort. I did post this problem there, under the name Blindmelonball, in the laptop general hardware forum. The answers from a (well meaning) "Dell Community Rockstar", were farcical. I played the game, was polite, etc., and didn't use lots of words I wanted to use, because I knew they'd get ****y. |
#30
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OT - Opened Apps Freeze (FIXED)
On 12/15/2011 4:46 PM, Boris wrote:
Christopher wrote in : On 12/15/2011 11:22 AM, Boris wrote: Christopher wrote in : On 12/14/2011 11:50 PM, Boris wrote: wrote in : wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: wrote in : In . 18, Boris wrote: By freezing, I mean this: I followed this whole thread and Christopher mentioned malware. This is what instantly popped up in my mind too. Not the only thing that can cause this problem, but a very common one. And is it possible that somebody in your household could have secretly installed a keyboard logger on the system? As malware checkers won't find them due to lawsuits from manufactures who legally sell them. I started in Safe Mode, inserted the OEM XPHome SP2 CD that came with the machine, and started a repair install. But, when I entered the Key found on the bottom of the laptop, it said no no. I didn't understand why this was. So, I installed Magical Jelly Bean Keyfinder, and got the key already on the machine, but it was a key that I didn't recognize from any of the OEM XP CDs I have. (I know I could have gotten them mixed up two years ago when I did a clean install.) Oh, well. I entered the key, and it worked. The laptop is now grinding away installing XPHome SP2. We'll see what happens. Oh that is one way of trying to fix it. But I would have tried a lot of other stuff first. Hi, Bill, Well, I did a repair install with no luck. Same problem. So I did a clean install, reformatting/repartitioning (slow method), and still no luck. I'm sort of at my wits end. Sorry to hear that. Well that pretty much rules out software is the problem if you didn't update Windows and didn't install the newest stuff. It also doesn't rule out a BIOS virus or one that hides on the hard drive that can survive formatting. But all of these possibilities pale in comparison to the evidence is really leaning on that it is a hardware problem. I know, kind of hard to believe for the problem you are having could be hardware, but it is true. So let's see, touchpad and mouse quits and gets reset through ALT-CTRL-DEL? But yet works perfectly fine in safemode? So what in the hardware could cause this? Well both touchpad and mouse are interfaced through what is commonly called the southbridge chip. So that is one. I suppose also either a flaky mouse or touchpad might cause the southbridge to get confused (buffer overflows most likely). RAM memory is another one. The power regulator (usually on the motherboard on laptops) could also cause this. And way down on the list would be CPU and motherboard too. So where to start first? Well if you were me, the easy stuff first. Order is up to you. 1) Trying another mouse. You can't easily swap out the touchpad. But when you need to dig deeper, you can disconnect the cable from it. Which usually requires the keyboard to be lifted up at least. But if your machine has a touchpad switch to disable it, then it is worth a shot. 2) RAM is pretty easy too. For this problem assuming two or more sticks is to just swap the two or more. Heck that could clear everything up alone. 3) Anything that can be removed for testing should be removed. In the least, everything like USB, firewire, serial, parallel, etc. in the very least. At the most things like the hard drive and optical drive should be too. Yeah for the latter, how? If you get this far, we can help you there. Another curious thing would be trying a bootable OS from another source like CD, flash, etc. Ubuntu Live CD comes to mind. I would personally remove the hard drive first, but most people wouldn't bother. I discovered that this laptop (i6400) has more problems than I knew. I was not the primary user. Now that I've done a fresh WinXP Home SP2 install, I notice a couple of other things. The screen saver will not come on. If the machine goes to sleep, pressing the power button, or shaking the mouse will not bring the desktop back up; you have to press and hold the power button to power down, then press again to bring back up. Of course, the apps are frozen again. And, although I installed all the drivers, in proper order from the Dell site, which I've done at least two other times in the past few years on this laptop, the SM Bus Controller under Other Devices, is yellowed out. Under Chipset, on the Dell site, http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04 I did install the Intel R114079 driver, described as supporting the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, and the Ricoh R141246 driver that supports memory cards. I also installed the audio and video drivers. When I google SM Bus Controller, I find that this controlls audio, video, and networking. But, all my audio, video, and networking drivers have been installed, and are working fine. I went to the Intel site and looked for a driver for the 945GM and ICH-7M chipset, but couldn't find one. Plus, I'm wondering if I did find one, and installed it, would it overwrite the already installed drivers and crash my audio, video, and network. I'm going to do some more hunting, and maybe go on the Dell forums, and see what others have to say. Maybe, just maybe, this particular driver would solve my problems. But that's a longshot. My wife is the primary user of this machine, and there's plenty of other XP/Win7 desktops around the house to use, or my own Win7 laptop (argh). She's thinking of getting a 17" desktop replacement laptop. I finally found the ICH-7M chipset on the Intel site, and it was the same version found on the Dell driver site, ver. 7.2.2.1106, so I didn't bother. Remeber that I got all the drivers from the Dell site? Well, I remembered that the laptop came with the ResourceCD, that contains drivers, so I thought I'd take a look at it. It, too, had the same Intel chipset driver, but nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try. I made a restore point, and then installed the Intel chipset driver from the ResourceCD. I kept my fingers crossed that I'd be able to start the machine again. No luck with the freezing, but the yellow bang cleared up that was next to SM Bus Controller. Next, I noticed that there was a Synaptics touchpad driver on the ResourceCD (there was none on the Dell driver site, and the touchpad was working anyway). I tried to install the touchpad driver, but was told that I was not the administrator. I never create an administrator account, but I did now so that I could install the touchpad driver. It installed fine. I now had three accounts: 1) admin (Administrator) 2) Wife (Computer Administrator, and 3) Guest. I restarted again, logged on as administrator, and the freezing was fixed. I shut down. I restarted, and logged on as Wife, and the freezing was gone!!! There is one thing different. The pointer no longer appears during the MicrosoftXP screen, when the blue squares move left to right, but does pop up when the Welcome screen appears. That's minor. Thanks to all that have been patient enough to read these long posts, and have taken the time to reply. dell updated their support web site about a month ago and since that time has been a complete mess. whether you navigate by model number or system tag number you may find drivers absent, or drivers (and even bios!) for other systems listed. unfortunately the only solution is to search for the desired driver one at a time. Absolutely. I found that out yesterday when I went back to the site and noticed the same thing. It is a mess (as is the forum). I learned a lesson, which someone on this ng suggested a while back. After an OS install, once you get your machine working as you like it, make a copy of C:\dell\drivers, and include a .txt file that describes what each file is for. oh don't get me started on the dell community forum... Too late. they actually delete users posts without notice. and they sometimes just edit them too because they don't like a word that you might have used. i understand that it is dell's forum and since they sponsor it they can do whatever they want with it, but the favoritism they show for certain people, the uneven way they apply their own rules, and the sleazy way they edit and delete posting without notice or explanation completely undermines the purpose of such a forum as well as its credibility as a place to exchange ideas. they built it to off load some of support work from their paid staff to unpaid participants, and then they staff it with people to police it and say it is only a users to user forum. but then the staff that is there to moderate and police it can't help themselves and randomly interject with offers to help people which usually do not yield any positive results and shows favoritism. what a complete mess. i recently wrote to dell about suggesting that they take a hard look at the dell community forum's management, its policies, its uneven enforcement of the policies, its moderators, and the abuses of obsessive compulsive contributors. it is overrun by a handful of well intentioned regulars who post so much that they don't even realize how jaded they have become and speak in lingo and shortcuts that the typical one off novice visitor does not understand. then it takes them four or five additional posts to get across what they could have done in one if they were not so sloppy and cavalier in their initial reply. i think dell should kill the dell community forum altogether, but at very least they should limit users posts to just a few per day. then perhaps people would spend more time contemplating a reply and fine tuning it instead of just polluting the place with a large volume of meaningless, useless, and half baked answers. ps. good to hear you solve your freezing problem. a far better outcome than reloading the system. I stopped going to the dell forums many years ago, when they first began making changes. I've probably only been there 2-3 times since, as a last resort. I did post this problem there, under the name Blindmelonball, in the laptop general hardware forum. The answers from a (well meaning) "Dell Community Rockstar", were farcical. I played the game, was polite, etc., and didn't use lots of words I wanted to use, because I knew they'd get ****y. he is one of the better ones, but he can't shake his belife that the 'dell system software' is actually necessary. even after i fully documented exactly what it does in a matrix of the fixes as they pertain to specific dell computers and microsoft operating systems. he even lists it as a necessary step for reloading windows 7 where is has zero value. in some older systems, and with older operating systems, only meaningful thing it did was optimize optical drive support (something which one could also do manually). other than that the only thing it does is enables your computer to send copies of crash reports that you send to microsoft on to dell. and i am certain that since your machine is well past end of life that simply do not care, and even when it was a supported system they might have cared but didn't do anything about it. |
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