Help with Dell Inspiron 1300

Nelski

Wonder if anyone can help. My neighbours laptop - Dell Inspiron 1300 (its about 4 years old) is having some problems.

It will turn on and starts the user screen (running XP home edition) but when you click a user it "hangs" on the wallpaper picture with no icons and the egg timer going. (massive apologies for my non technical language but at least you know the way to talk back to me )

They had Mcafee virus protection but apparantly it has run out :rolleyes: so I am assuming no protection on it at all now.

Sorry for scant detail but I have it here for any questions

Thank you in anticipation

MX5huggy

Dittio,

look here for more detail http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm

Nelski

computershack wrote: »

Press f8 when it is booting to start in safe mode and report back what happens.

I have a black screen with safe mode in the bottom right and left corner and this right at the top

Microsoft (R) Windows XP (R) (Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_qfe.090804-1435 Service Pack

Browntoa

does not get any Further than that ??

if they have nothing important on the Laptop then the 1300 had a restore partition that resets it to factory , you access it by hitting F11 on boot

Nelski

no its still there - there are 4 lights at the bottom of the laptop and 3 are lit and the second one is flashing dont know if that means anything

oh and macafee thing came up to say it wasnt protected

pcombo

Go back to the login screen,

Press control, Alt and delete till you get a small login box appear with a blue background and enter the account info there see if it lets you in.

Nelski

I have got the task manager up now

pcombo

So you were able to login, I advise you to maybe run a disk check, and a virus scan incase anything is stopping you.

Nelski

pcombo wrote: »

So you were able to login, I advise you to maybe run a disk check, and a virus scan incase anything is stopping you.

can you let me know how to do a disk check please?
no start menu or any other icons on the screen other than the task manager
thanks

pcombo

Go to my computer, right click on C Drive>Properties>Tools tab.

And click the button Check now.

EDIT: didn't read

On start task manager select >file > new task and enter CMD one the black box appears type chkdsk.

Nelski

pcombo wrote: »

Go to my computer, right click on C Drive>Properties>Tools tab.

And click the button Check now.

EDIT: didn't read

On start task manager select >file > new task and enter CMD one the black box appears type chkdsk.

ok sorry that took a while

so it says windows found problems with the file system and to click /F (fix) option to correct these

then a list of KB data

Should I do the /F option?

thanks