My Computer's Acting WEIRD

Soz, what is the problem the computer is having? I'd be happy to try & help you, but the only things you've said about it so far are "the very first black & white screen changed", "there are other issues too", & "the problems are when we try to shut it down or turn it off". Installing drivers for what it thinks is new hardware, even if you didn't change or connect anything to your PC recently, is most likely nothing to worry about at all. If you could say...

• what the boot screen changed to, &
• what the problems are when you try to shut down

..I'll try my best to help you.

a) Anyone will need info to be able to help you. Calling Gateway is great, but you could always ask here too, or ask here if you have any problems with them.

b) From what you've said so far it doesn't seem like a major problem that will crash your computer. Running GoBack was a good step to take, & it seems like it fixed the "other issues" you mentioned. If at some point Windows won't start up or something, let us know here & we can try to walk you through it, but in most cases you could just run GoBack & that would take care of things nicely. If you're using Win ME or XP it has a built-in program called System Restore that does basically the same thing GoBack does.

What is Go-Back?

bunny, Symantec GoBack is software that will quickly restore your PC to exactly how it was at a previous date. (Symantec just took it over from Roxio.) If you're using Windows ME or XP you already have software that does the exact same thing.

Re: My Computer's Acting WEIRD
Monger,

Ahem:



I KNOW I don't have enough details, and that I would need more details. I don't have more details because the problems didn't happen when I was using the computer, and E.G., who was, is madly finishing a paper right now and doesn't have time to summarize. Just, when we were talking about this this a.m., I said "so what do we do if it does crash?" and he said, "Uh, no idea", and since I don't have any experience with that, thought I'd ask. I gave what info I have to give a very general idea of what kind of a problem it is.

Dlowan, our computer is a Gateway, and they have a very cool thing called "Gateway GoBack" where you re-set the computer to a time in the past. So say you got a virus on Wednesday, you set the computer back to Monday and everything's fine. The part that sucks is you lose everything you did in the interim -- new documents, new "favorites", etc. -- but since I use the computer almost entirely for Internet stuff, doesn't affect me too much.

Soz, I answered your 2 questions in my 2nd post.

PS: If you're running Windows Me or XP, in the future you should run System Restore instead of GoBack. It does the same thing but leaves all your documents & favorites alone.

In the event of a big crash, other than the "run GoBack & see if that takes care of it" advice, we'd need to know what caused the crash or what problems/error messages you're seeing in order to tell you what to do about it.

OK...

First, your willingness to help is really appreciated. Thanks.

In terms of your first response, you said you'd be happy to help me except that I didn't offer enough info, etc... I know. I don't have any more info to offer, and I'm not expecting anyone to fix the problem based on that paltry amount of info.

In terms of being walked through it here (thanks), what I'm talking about is what to do if it utterly crashes, so I couldn't access A2K. I guess just call Gateway and go from there...

I just don't really have experience with a computer utterly crashing (can't make it work, at all), and was looking for what people do in that situation. I know that people here have talked about that -- "I haven't been on A2K for the last 3 weeks because my computer crashed" -- just not sure how it is solved.

In most cases restarting your computer works best for me. It's a frustrating part of life conflicts within the computer.

Yep, that fixes many problems, Algis.

Thanks for the info about System Restore, Monger, didn't know that.

Thousands of things can make Windows stop booting. Some are extremely easy to fix, while in other situations there will be no way to recover your data.

The only things I can recommend without the crash having already happened would be:

• Run GoBack (most likely the simplest fix)
• Reinstall Windows
• Run a virus scan from a bootable CD (this works when you can't run it from within Windows)
• Call Gateway

And be sure to frequently back up your important data.

OK, thanks. And if a crash DOES happen...?

To expand a bit -- I am just trying to get a feel for what to expect. Examples: Do you bring the whole computer to a repair shop? Do they come to your house to do it? How long before I could expect it to be working again? How much does it tend to cost? (I know there would be many variables there).

The "other issues" (which, again, I can't go into because I don't know what they are and E.G. can't summarize) were not resolved by a GoBack.

Given your willingness to help (again, thanks) and your obvious expertise, I will try to get a summary out of E.G. once more and see if that gives you more to work with.

E.G. speaks:

some recent symptoms:

Computer is a Pentium II or III 650 MHz, 256 Mb ram, just a few years old, running Windows 98. We keep up to date on Windows updates.

First problem was that shutdown hangs. Ctrl-Alt-Del to kill tasks reveals that something called Imgcon is the problem. Killing that manually allows shutdown to continue, but then it hangs again later. Powerdown in required, as it doesn't respond to further Ctrl-Alt-Del.

On startup, there are two new odd things. First, the BIOS display screen is different in appearance. Looks reasonable, but it is different. Was all text before, but now dispays a small Gateway logo image. The text is somewhat re-arranged too. Second, after that, once it starts booting Windows, it says it sees new hardware and then installs new drivers. The only info I saw was something about the COM port. We haven't recently changed any cabling of external devices. This, like the new BIOS display screen, is odd but not technically a problem. The concern is that this is related to the shutdown problems and also that it is unexplained. Also, this morning at some point, icons on the desktop were messed up. Those that normally have a little arrow in the lower left corner had just a little blank box there. Odd.

and it has just generally been unreliable. sometimes boots hang. sometimes programs just won't run. both are cured by rebooting.

In terms of his comments, I have been having problems with the scanner, and did unplug the scanner's power cable and the cable that runs from the scanner to the computer, then plugged both cables back in, a few days ago.

• Re: the new BIOS screen, it sounds like you've run a patch from Gateway which updated your BIOS. That shouldn't be a problem.
  
• If the icon problem went away when you restarted the computer it was just a temporary Windows glitch that you don't have to worry about. You can download a program called Tweak UI from Microsoft which, in addition to many other features that I don't recommend using, gets rid of the problem when icons are acting weird.
  
• Imgcon is an image format conversion program. You should uninstall it unless you use it a lot (in which case reinstall it) in order to eliminate that as a possible problem. That doesn't seem to be the main problem though.
  
• Is the 'found new hardware wizard' coming up every time Windows boots now, or did it stop coming up once it installed the driver? If it shows up every time Windows starts even though Windows keeps successfully installing it, I'd suspect an IRQ conflict (which could well explain all the legitimate problems you're having.

Great, thanks!!!!! Will send this on to him.

E.G.'s reply:

very useful, thanks.

not sure about the answer to the last question, because of go backing. we'll have to check it tonight. i think the answer is no.

***

Thanks again!

My quick 2 cents:

Back up everything you want to keep to removable media or some such.

That way, if it does indeed crash, it's no biggie (unless it's hardware, in which case it'll cost you a bit) just format and reinstall.

Yep. I'd be backing up like a maniac right about now, as a precaution.