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Sounds like you've got a knackered hard drive to me. 3 things to check: - Check the BIOS and see what device its trying to boot from. The above message can be as simple as the PC trying to boot from a floppy/CD with a non-bootable disk in the drive. You want the option called "Boot Priority" or similar. - If its trying to boot from the hard-drive, check the BIOS to see if its recognising the drive. Somewhere in there is usually a screen which displays the IDE devices. It should list your hard-drive (probably) as primary master, and then (probably) your CD drive(s) as secondary master & slave. - If the BIOS can see the drive (meaning it isn't totally dead) then you could do worse than download (or get a friend to download) the Ultimate Boot CD - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/. It is a self-booting CD which contains lots of diagnostic tools. Choose one for hard-drives, run a test and see what results you get. Report back and we'll see what we can do.

When you use the Windows installer to format the hard-disk it asks something like "do you want to add support for large disks?" - did you say yes or no to this? Pretty much you should always say yes. If you said no, this may be the problem.

A stuck 'Delete' key? It sounds crazy but it might explain it. Or perhaps its more subtle - a dodgy connection somewhere with your keyboard (or mouse, I've seen it happen). Try using a different keyboard and/or mouse (try all combinations) and see if that helps.

Hi, To be honest, this sounds like a problem with the graphics card. Usually when the display corrupts in such a way (weird lines or patterns) it will be related to the graphics card. Its just possible actually that its the software for the graphics card which is corrupted - this would explain the safe mode behaviour. You could try removing the current driver and reinstalling from the CD which came with it. If that doesn't work, I'd say you're looking at a broken graphics card. Hope that helps, Simon

While its difficult to tell, it sounds like an over-heating problem. Modern motherboards will have an overheating alarm (the beeping) which kicks in at a certain temperature. Also, the behaviour of switching off after a few seconds sounds very much like overheating. At a certain temperature (70 degrees on the PCs I've seen but it varies) the motherboard will just cut power to stop the processor melting. And whilst you let it cool down for a few hours, a processor which isn't receiving sufficient cooling will heat up VERY quickly. The case fan is just a nicety in this situation, its the processor fan you want to look at. If its not spinning (and they can break for any number of reasons) then the PC is going to stop very quickly. As you say you recently fitted RAM, have a look to see if a power or other cable has got itself positioned such that its stopping the processor fan from turning. This happened to me once on a PC I built for myself and I can imagine its easy to do if you're inside the case for any reason.

Experience tells me that its unlikely to be a virus. Virii tend to be better at hiding than that. (But its always possible I suppose.) It sounds like a process which is launched automatically on startup is locking the file. If so, you could try booting into Safe Mode (try this link if you don't know how: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/chsafe.htm) as this disables running most startup processes. If you can delete this file when in safe mode then this was the problem. Of course, if that process NEEDS that file, it might complain after that. Out of interest, what's the file's name?

So is there data on the 150GB partition? Did it used to work and now it doesn't? I thought this was a new partition which wasn't showing up in Windows. It would be very odd for a partition to corrupt to the point where it wasn't recognised at all.

A newly created partition is just a blank space on a disk. Two things need to happen after this. 1) you need to set it up as a logical drive in Windows (this should give it a drive letter, e.g. D:, Windows should take care of this itself), 2) it needs to be formatted. Both of these tasks can be achieved through Disk Management. I suggest reading this to guide you through the process: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309000/ If you are given the choice, I recommend formatting your new partition as NTFS, rather than FAT32. If you want to ask more questions, feel free.

Can I just clarify what you mean when you say you "partitioned" your hard drive? Partitioning or re-partitioning usually leaves you with blank partitions, which would explain the "Invalid system disk" message. (There are tools that will repartition a disk without affecting the contents though, which is why I ask.) As for why you can't boot from the Windows XP disk - odd. You are seeing the correct message ("Press any key") but the only reason I can think of for this not working is either that you aren't pressing it quick enough (which doesn't seem to be the case from what you say) or you have a keyboard fault which means the PC is never registering the key press. Your PC then thinks you don't want to boot from the CD but from the hard drive so you receive the "Invalid system disk" message again. Although it sounds like it is, check your BIOS is correctly set to boot from your CD-ROM drive: this link is useful; http://www.hiren.info/pages/bios-boot-cdrom

That's extremely vague. The usual method for deleting files is double-click on My Computer, then navigate to where the file is, highlight (single click) the file then press "Delete" (NOT back space) on the keyboard. Confirm the dialogue that appears and your file is sent to the Recycle Bin. If you want to clear it from the Recycle Bin, right-click the Recycle Bin and select "Empty".

Defragging is a good idea. But 256MB is not a lot of memory to run Windows in (although technically possible). In general terms, adding memory is the quickest and easiest way to add performance (not raw speed) to a PC. Personally, I recommend nothing less than 1GB of RAM, more if you possibly can.

Which version of Windows are you wanting to reinstall? Windows XP and newer aren't DOS-based in the same way so you can't "get to" DOS. What will you be reinstalling from? Some manufacturers issue a "restore" CD. If you have one of these you won't need to reformat, as the restore CD will overwrite everything. If you have an original Windows CD then try booting from it and see what options it gives you.

Several things you can try. - Defrag your hard drives. Read this to show you how: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314848 - The above defragger cannot defrag some files, so install and run PageDefrag: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/PageDefrag.mspx - If you really do want to see/edit the programs which are running on startup, then this program will be very useful: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/SystemInformation/Autoruns.mspx Think about any software you installed which corresponds to roughly when the slow down occurred. I've known software which installs Services (elements which start with Windows) which can have a significant and detrimental effect on startup times.

What provider is your son's email account with? Is it different to your broadband provider? Exactly what are you putting into the POP3 and SMTP fields? When you say "not working", what exactly happens? If there's an error message, what is it? Some ISP email accounts cannot be checked if you are connected to a different ISP, but if you can answer the above questions we can have a good go at solving this problem.

I'd be interested to know where these images are getting encoded into JPEG format. Are they coming directly off a hardware device (digital camera, mobile etc) or are you running them through some software first? It sounds to me like they aren't being created properly.