Computer Help

[Someone]

My 6-month old Dell Desktop has been acting up lately.

When I have a number of programs open, things start to act funny. For example, I'll open up Photoshop, and half of the menu items are missing. I'll open up a dialog box in Photoshop, and many of the controls are missing.

Pressing alt-tab will switch between applications, but the box won't appear. Right clicking in some applications will cease to function.

The only remedy to this problem is to close some apps then continue.

This sounds like some kind of memory management or VM problem. Even though I have several applications open when this occurs, there's still plenty of physical and virtual memory available. If Windows runs out of memory, it should typically allocate more VM and run slower.

Can anyone help shed some light on what's going on?

 

[nachoninja]

what size is your pagefile?

 

[engaged]

how much ram?

 

[Someone]

1 gb system memory
Page file 1.5gb - 3gb

 

[Deliguy]

Sounds like you either have a corrupt kernell32 dll or a vbruntime file went missing.
First disable your themes by going to Start >> Run >> services.msc
find themes and right click then click properties. Click Stop.
insert your windows cd
click start
click run
sfc /scannow
click ok


that will do a system filecheck on your windows install and replace any missing or corupt ones(fixes the kernel32 dll)
If this doesn't work download and reinstall all the vbruntime files for winxp.

if this still doesn't work than boot off the cd
at the first option select R for repair console
select c:\windows (option 1)
type chkdsk /r
that'll do a full repair of all your system files. It'll also clean an incomplete pagefile.

When all this is done reactivate your themes service and do all your windows updates. Then restart the computer. It also wouldn't hurt to clean out your c:\windows\prefetch folder and do a virus scan.

 

[Someone]

Deliguy, thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, Dell no longer distributes XP CDs with their new computers.

 

[Deliguy]

dell still does you just have to request them($10) but forw hat your doing any winxp cd will work just as long as it matches your version(home, pro, media, or x64). You could try to borrow a buddies.