A few problems. Too many for title

[nenni]

I'm actually asking for help for a friend of mine. She's having a number of problems.

First off she's using Windows XP. Her computer was upgraded in Nov last year.

She's having problems shutting off her computer. When she clicks on 'start' and then 'turn off computer' the menu is coming up but then it does nothing at all. She can click turn off or reboot but nothing happens when she does. So she has to manually shut down (holding the on button down till it turns off. When she boots up her computer everything is fine. Plus she has no problems connecting online.

Web pages don't come up properly...they have missing bits, and the heading doesn't change between pages. Sometimes the heading bit is missing completely. That's the best way i can describe it or After viewing a web page the screen doesn't totally go back to normal (it still has remnants of the previous page)...Like if she was on this forum and went to another web page it would still have the header for this forum.

When she tries to run power dvd, the sound is distorted, like it's running at slow speed.

Also a program she uses slows down and says she has insufficient data to process the request.

The only programs she has no problem with is mIRC and a messenger.

She's ran a virus scan with Trend Micro PC Cillin and there was nothing. She then did a scan with superantispyware and healed 107 spyware. She's done a reboot and everything is the same as before.

She tried to take a screenshot of what a web page looks like for her (in the hope it could help) but it says she has insufficient data to take the screenshot. The error message says "There is not enough memory or resources to complete operation. Close some programs and try again" She has 67% free space and cant understand why it says this message.

She cant ctrl alt del to see if any programs are running.
She tried to do a defrag and after 7% it shut itself down. So she tried to open it again and got " not existing, being a different version, or don't have access priveleges"

I hope I've listed this in the right section and listed everything that could help explain the problem she's having. I'd be so grateful for any help what-so-ever. I've done a search on the forum and google and cant find anything to help.

Thanks

[Miz]

The "not enough memory or resources" part of the error message is a clue. It sounds like she has a lot of stuff running in the background; more than her computer can handle well.

It's not uncommon to have a lot of stuff loading on startup of which the user is unaware. Too many software writers seem to feel their stuff just has to be running at all times.

Many programs running in the background give themselves away by putting an icon in the Notification Area (the area around the time display on the end of the Taskbar). The first thing to try is to open each one and look at each's Options/Preferences/Settings (whatever terminology each uses) for a way to disable loading on startup. Then reboot and see if things improve.

More things to try are listed in this post.

[david riley]

She could also try start/run/msconfig/startup and uncheck all but her antivirus and firewall and mouse (if it's a laptop) Then restart the computer and close out nag menu that will appear. Then defrag and see what happens. Good luck.