Weird problems on a Dell Laptop.

[Phaddie]

Hey guys,
My girlfriend has a Dell inspiron 1764 laptop. Just recently she has been having some problems with it and I have not been able to even figure out what it is let alone fix it.

The problem is they are no error msgs at all. The computer just will not do some things. For instance it will not load the devices and printers screen, it will just sit there with the status bar very close to full, did this over night no error. It will also not load Word but will load the other office applications. When you attempt to load word the splash screen comes up and it just sits there. No error or crash just does nothing.

I have of course scanned for everything I can think of (virus, spyware. ran chkdsk). I am stumped as to what to try next. Any help or suggestions would be very helpful.

Thank you in advance

phad

[punk_zappa]

Have you tried clean install?

[Andy]

I too wouldn't bother trying to figure out the issue. Is it still running the original bloatware filled version of Windows from Dell? If so ... format and clean install.

[frontier204]

I've had something like that happen before, but as the others suggested the only fix I had was a format. It was caused by a failing hard drive which corrupted the OS and chkdsk ran, but obviously couldn't correct the issue. My guess is something happened that corrupted some OS related files.

I'd do the HDD manufacturer's check on it just in case before formatting it. (e.g. SeaTools for Seagate)

[JJThomp]

I'll just start off by saying no problems are strange on a dell, I've seen almost all of them and I'm not even an IT or computer guys. I'm just the guy my friends bring their computers too when they break. My girlfriend had this same problem, format the drive do a fresh install and get rid of all the bloatware and it will be fixed for a month or two, I don't know what the source of the problem is but formatting is a band aid solution to it.

[Shadowmeph]

Which OS are you using?