On Sun, 17 May 2009 17:33:14 -0500, Charlie Tame <charlie@xxxxxx>
wrote:
Quote:
>Alfred Kaufmann wrote: Quote:
>> On Sun, 17 May 2009 12:30:52 -0400, "Mike Hall - MVP"
>> <mikehall@xxxxxx> wrote:
>> Quote:
>>> "Alfred Kaufmann" <al_kaufmann@xxxxxx> wrote in message
>>> news:4dc015pdg7kto3jtp63eu0qjnmalfl3iuh@xxxxxx
>>>> The Event Viewer of my friend's computer shows a lot of errors saying
>>>> that his hard drive is corrupt and unusable. On every re-boot the
>>>> Disk Checker starts up and does its thing only to report there are no
>>>> problems.
>>>>
>>>> Could there be some other hardware problem that would cause Vista to
>>>> report these type of errors? My friend did take his machine into the
>>>> shop to be checked out be a Certified Technician and they told him
>>>> that everything was OK. At least they did not charge him for the
>>>> service.
>>>>
>>>> I am a bit concerned that he had a lot of programs operating in the
>>>> background which caused a lot of memory swapping as he has only 1GB of
>>>> memory. What is the minimum amount of recommended memory for Vista
>>>> now? I think it used to be 1.5GB, has that changed?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>> Al
>>>>
>>>
>>> Alfred
>>>
>>> It is time to do a destructive restore. Judging from what you stated in your
>>> earlier post, you have been brought into play rather late in the game.
>>>
>>> There comes a point where a user does so much damage to an operating,
>>> installing one rogue anti-spyware utility after another, that trying to
>>> repair it will take way longer than it is all worth.
>>>
>>> Normally, users who get into this state tend not to be the kind who have
>>> backed any data up to external media, so you will have to tell your friend
>>> that it is all a lost cause.
>>>
>>> Your friend may learn from the experience, but you will have to do a little
>>> tutoring of your own if you don't want to go through the experience again..
>>
>> Hi Mike,
>>
>> Thanks for the reply, I was thinking along the same lines and was
>> maybe just looking for confirmation.. The Certified Technician told
>> him the same thing but he did not like that he would have to
>> re-install his programs. I don't see the problem as all he is
>> concerned about is saving some pictures and re-installing one photo
>> program.
>>
>> I will make a backup of his pictures tell him to take the machine back
>> for a "destructive restore". Sounds better than format drive C: :-)
>>
>> Al
>> >
>
>Alfred, bad RAM can make it appear as if drives. video cards and just
>about everything else is faulty.
>
>I would suggest that you go into the store and check the RAM prices, his
>1G might be one or two memory sticks and with the price of memory these
>days it might be better to simply remove the 1G and buy one 2G stick.
>When sure all is well you can put the 1G back if you like and see if
>problems occur. Allow some hours to run the memory test. Thanks for that suggestion. I just added Memtest86 to the pile.
Al