RandyL

My two cents worth. Many Emachines emit a high powered fan noise at boot up. I have one myself. I can only guess that this is by design in order to cool at startup which is when over heating often happens. Over heating in itself will not cause noise. Nor will a machine that is just over heating emit extra fan noises. As bee said a shutdown or restart is what usually happens. Fan noises are usually caused by a clogged or failing fan. A hard drive going bad noise is completely different noise. In my opinion your symptoms indicate a failing or corrupt hard drive. None of the advanced boot options work but you can boot to the advanced options. NTLDR indicates a corrupt OS or drive. Both of these seem to be hard drive or corrupt system. Couple that with some sort of noise. Probably the drive. bee and bob both gave excellent possibilities. With the limited information you provided I'm guessing you had better backup all your files before doing anything else. dawn please be very specific in describing exactly what is happening and in what order. bee and bob what do you think with the latest NTLDR information?

As far as OCR goes I think your scanner software has ABBYY FineReader Sprint OCR.

It seems that using selective startup in msconfig disabled the offending entry. Now I'm wondering if you might have malware. I'll ask the security guys what they think. By all means make that repair disk as Nev said. Thanks Nev.

You could try this Microsoft Fixit. It can't hurt. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/971058

Hi joner. I'll reply since no one else has. I've never messed with the keys or keyboard on a laptop. It's possible that he may have broken a part under the keys. If you're up to it you can try and pry up the keys to look.

Starbuck I'm seeing Java 6 update 33 on my computer. Try this link ennnceee. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html Java SE 7u6 JRE is probably what you need.

Possibly the Windows 7 forum. Windows 7 is the latest operating system from Microsoft. We can always move your thread later if need be.

Hi davy. What programs are doing this? Does Internet explorer do the same thing when you open a new or second window? Somtimes the windows do need resizing. Doing this in IE may fix the program window resizing too. I'll list the instructions just in case it may be of help. You will need to to follow this exactly. Open IE from a shortcut such as from the quick launch area. Drag the edges to fill the screen. Do not close that window. Open a new window from the same shortcut. Drag the edges to fill the screen. Click the middle icon top right to maximize the second window. Go to the first window. Click the middle icon top right to maximize the first window. Close the first window. Close the second window. The same steps work for many other windows functions such as documents or control panel.

HP uses recovery disks. A full installation set of disks will work the same way. Boot into the BIOS and set the first boot device to the disk drive. CD/DVD. Save the change and exit the BIOS. Insert the first installation disk and reboot the computer. When it boots to the DVD the installation will prompt you on whether or not you want to partition and it will format the hard drive during the installation. Unlike the old DOS based systems you do not need to format or fdisk before the installation. Once again you have to set the BIOS to boot from the optical drive first and save the change before exiting the BIOS. I'm surprised you have a floppy drive. Most don't these days. The floppy drive is probably the first drive listed to boot from. This is fine as if there is no disk in it it will move to the next listed drive. However if the hard drive is listed first it will not move on to the next bootable drive. Hence it won't start the installation from the disk.

This is not normal. You are missing a lot of options in the Advanced Startup. Have you tried this? I take it you never made the startup repair disks. With the latest service packs you would have had the option. msconfig may be an option to try to deselect startup items but something is just not right here.

Bob I would do it. Unsecure is just asking for trouble. If you want you can always make a manual system restore point to revert to.

I don't know what the cause is and it may be hard to determine or correct at this point. The time to figure it out was when you could still get into Windows. Instead you kept working around the issue. However we are where we are now. It could be hardware related like a failing drive with a corrupted OS or a different hardware issue. Possibly it could be malware. When you use F8 to get to the boot options try "Repair my computer" or "Last known good configuration". If you don't see Restore points try ticking the box that says show older restore points or restore points older then five days. I forget what the exact option is in Vista. If any of these work then it's time to find out what is causing this to keep happening. If they don't work then it might be worth a try to scan for malware in safemode with a good detection program. Try the options to get into Windows first.

That's good to hear PEV. Let us know how it goes. Once you are ready to move on someone will help you with the next step. Thanks for your kind words. We do indeed have many fine nembers such as GRANDAD. It's not just the staff that make a forum. It's members helping members that make a forum. We hope to hear from you when you get the time.

I'm on Windows 7 now but if it should be the same as in the links I provided. If you set your default mail to Windows Live as described in the above links then when you send direct from your scanner it should send from there. If you are using IE then open internet options and then programs. You should see your client listed. Choose it then click apply/ok. Outlook Express is part of XP. It is set by default to be your client unless you change it. Change it to Windows Live Mail and your scanner should send from there. Let us know how it goes please.

Here are a couple links for you on how to change the default email in Windows XP. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555566 http://hdc.tamu.edu/Connecting/Email/Managing_Email/Changing_the_Default_Email_Program_in_Windows_XP.php What email client do you use?

I'm not a gamer but I have an opion that I tell everyone who asks about over clocking. Why don't you just buy a computer that has the specs you need instead of risking damage or messing up the settings. You can't make a silk purse out of a cows ear. In other words if you want a gaming computer you need to buy one. Overclocking will not make a cheap computer a gaming computer. All the components matter. For a couple thousand dollars you could get a really nice gaming computer. Or you could get an average computer for half that price and and a game device like an Xbox for a few hundred dollars on top of that. More if you want a bigger hard drive. Serious gamers who play on PC's will spend even more. Overclocking won't make a computer something it is not. It may give a slight performance boost but you run a risk. Just my opinion.

Thanks GRANDAD. Well said. PEV make the recovery disks.

Good points Synapse. IE 3 lol Limited AV options, Java, Flash and new coding standards that IE3 does not support. So many limitations.

Sure you can run it. Usually you can connect via dsl or cable if it has ethernet or dialup if not. However it is not supported by Microsoft and will not be secure. Also most ISP's likely will not support it so you're on your own with them. If you can't get it to connect they won't help you. My ISP provider options with support are limited to Windows XP, Vista and 7. Personally I wouldn't waste my time with an unsecure and unsupported OS that you really would be able to do very little with. Your choice though.

A couple of dollars, 30 minutes and just a few clicks. I've never used mirror images before but you will need an external drive or maybe 70 or 80 disks to mirror a 40 Gb hard drive. The time will be considerably longer of course. I do have a complete backup on an external drive but I've never had the need to use it. My personal opinion is it's always best to have the recovery or installation disks. If your backup image or external drive fails all you'll have left is a very expensive paper weight. Some of what you are looking at is not what you want. I advise you to do first things first then move on to more complicated backup options. Also backing up to the existing drive is not a good option. If the drive fails, all will fail sooner or later, your backup is worthless. You will need to reinstall to a new drive.

In the past I found Microsoft Word to have one of the better spell check features but even so it was never perfect. I think you already checked your settings like in this link. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/autocorrect-spelling-and-insert-text-and-symbols-HA010354277.aspx Your and you're are often used incorrectly. If you typed you're and your is the correct syntax it won't flag it. But it's likely that this is just a case of nothing is perfect. I no longer have Word so I can't offer more I'm afraid.

Go to control panel (classic view) and click on System. This will show your version of Windows and service pack. Next go to Windows Updates in the control panel and check for updates manually. While there look in Restore hidden updates and look in View update history. You tried the stand alone installer and ran the readiness tool which did not resolve the error. Microsoft suggests that it should work. Are you getting any updates? Is Windows activated?

That's what it sounds like. I thought that may be the case when you said you needed 7 disks.

Do not continue if you don't have enough disks. Do you have a dvd burner or just a cd burner? Some older computers have a dvd drive that can only read, not write. You need the right disks that you can write to. DVD or CD.

Hi. Just a couple questions. Are you using auto-update or updating via the update applet? Are you updating by the stand alone installer from Microsoft? Is this the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows?