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Howard thanks, sorry to keep on with this… now having run a Dell diagnostic which showed a FAIL on HDD and sending the report to Dell… they agree that they will replace the Hard drive (so you were right all along) under warranty and an engineer will call to do it. Thats fine but…thats all he will do replace the HDD and take the old one away. I assume that means I have to re install all the OS (XP Home) and drivers etc etc. Im not sure I know how, Ive saved all my important documents, photos, music, to CD R but I guess I lose everything else, is there a simple way of backing up this stuff. I remember reading about this on the Lounge somewhere maybe you could point me in the right direction? Also how do I make sure personal info doesnt get carried off in the bad HDD – credit card number, bank accounts and so forth?

Right. got all my important stuff backed up in case the worst happens. Meanwhile have a friend who has experience working inside machines coming over this weekend and he will re-seat cables and memory modules first to check its not something as simple as that.

(Edited by cbaldrey on 24-Jul-03 16:32. URL tags added)

as this could be an ongoing problem found and joined in another forum : http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/bo…essage.id=50844%5B/url%5D an interesting post from an ex Dell tech?

Wow! Really, really usefull, just the job, many thanks.

To anyone that might be interested in the progress of this.. The warning stopped as suddenly as it appeared and everything has been working ok as far as I can tell. Still waiting for Dell diagnostic disk, so went to Maxtor site (my HDD Maxtor 5TO60H6) followed instructions to make a diagnostic floppy diskette, ran the first two tests which all passed. Didn’t go any further with the diags as it warned that the next tests were data destructive. So rightly or wrongly I am taking no further action at this time (I don’t know what else to do).
Could this be linked to AOL in some way as it all started when I installed AOL8 over AOL7 then did system restore (as this seemed to be the only thing that I altered on the computer), then last weekend I couldn’t connect to AOL at all – everything just stopped when I tied to start AOL. Eventually sorted out by their phone support by deleting the Cache folder. As I say all seems ok at the present time. Spent ages trawling Dell & Maxtor KB’s but cant find any info relating to this.

Thanks Howard, managed to talk to someone at Dell – whew! what a marathon to get a live voice! (are they all so dumb or is it just the UK?) Upshot is… they are sending a diagnostic cd which apparently I should already have??? Meanwhile “keep using your machine and if the hard disk fails you’ll know it is at fault then contact us again” That really eases my mind! I’ve backed up my important stuff so just keep going and see what happens….

Thanks for the link Cowboy, I couldnt find this when I tried, so lots of information there, still keeping going for the time being … see my reply to Howard…

Thanks SMBP. I have now got another WMP9 from MS update and low and behold all works fine so far and no distortion of music playback that I’ve noticed. Whatever caused the initial plroblem will probably remain a mystery maybe just a glitch somewhere on the download at first attempt. I will just put it down to one of those things. As you say, the netmeeting thing is probably unrelated but I noticed that there is a new driver available for the webcam so maybe that has a bearing. So at the moment all seems back to normal…thanks to everyone again for their time and trouble in helping me with this.

joe, thanks for all that. found the bios as you described but as nothing relates to sound, therefore have left well enough alone. And I have now got another WMP9 from MS update and believe it or not all works ok this time. So thanks again for you help.

Thanks for useful tips SMBP. Windows Crash Analysis didnt yield much info except error caused by device driver. but going into event viewer I think the serious error was defined as conf.exe which Im wondering if that relates to netmeeting ?? as there was a problem connecting to a colleague for a video conference over the weekend? I will try again with WMP9 plus encoder this coming weekend as all the reports say it really is worth having. Meanwhile thanks to all for the suggestions as if nothing else I sure am beginning to increase my very limited knowledge of how these computers function!

Joe, dont know how to check BIOS updates but sound card driver is ok and XP service pack1 is installed,

decided to bite the bullet and restore my computer to an earlier time – that being…just before installing WMP9. When computer re started there was a message window “Your computer has recovered from a serious error” and send report to Microsoft which I did. On folowing this through the only info I could get was ” error caused by device driver”. Everything seems to be ok including no distortion on the media player (now back to version 8). I’m wary of downloading the upgrade WMP9 again, could somebody explain what might have happened? I never installed anything else new that I know of apart from WMP9.

thanks for the tips. yep Ive been to the enhancements etc as you suggest and that all seems ok. As I replied to Wylly it just seems a problem with cd. tried a song or two from Windows Media Site as you suggested and sound seems ok on that, though hard to distinguish from your own personal cds. Im gonna try download another WMP9 and encoder and see if that makes a difference, will let you know what happens in a few days.

thanks for replys. Im sure its media player as a pre recorded cd doesnt play as clear sound as it used to either. even a pre recorded cd burned to blank cd via media player 8 now played on new player 9 is muffled and muzzy (I hope that makes sense to you) so Im thinking best to uninstall and go for media player 9again. will let you know what happens.

By lowering volume control on the actual media player, then adjusting volume with computer and speaker volume controls does seem to clear the distortion. But the sound is still not as clear as it used to be and there is a noticable difference in sound clarity using the Roxio player compared to media player….it doesnt sound so muffled…difficult to describe if you cant hear what I mean. Would it do any harm to uninstall media player 9 then download and re-install it again? see if that makes any difference?