My 6000D story so far

Ok so my HP ze4325us hard drive failed and I quickly needed a new laptop and stuff. I didn't really consider enough about how having a desktop and a cheaper more portable laptop would have been better but the 6000d seemed the best and I got an OK deal for 900 pounds of eBay for good specs (X300, 1.86ghz, 1gb RAM, WXSGA+). Theres lots of thing I like about it, but maybe for some help and info, I will describe the problems and stuff, in the following description. I've probably wittered on a bit about stuff, so don't worry if you get bored, or you think I'm craxy for typing so much

After about 2 days I started getting a few small jambs here and there and then I got a blue screen. I think it was ATI so due to the graphics card.
I returned to working normally, and then I can't really remember what made me to a dell system restore again except BT told me it was a Windows related error that was damaging my connection with them. There were some other problems of just generally running smoothly that being honest, I can't remember.
Ah then not long after my 2nd dell pc restore, Windows wouldn't boot because hal.dll couldn't be found. The only option seemed to be a clean install.
The backup disc that I had created through Dells 'make your own Windoes disk ' thing had errors on it which was annoying. not allowing me to end it.
I borrowed the Windows disk from someone else, and did a clean install. Upon arriving in Windows I installed all the drivers (or what I thought was all). I have the following problems at the moment:

1. For DVD playback the sound at maximum is quiet. All the master controls are maximum and so is the volume in windows media player. The quality definitely isn't great of this DVD (charlie and the chocolate factory if anyones interested) as theres quite a lot of banding (I think) and stuff.

2. Some videos on the internet work fine for sound but play made of bright colours making the video unwatchable.

3. Sometimes, after maybe an hour of use, everything just jamms a little, and then soon after when I try and open anything, it says something like 'doesn't have the system resources.' I have a 1gb ram and 1.86ghz pentium m so its not lack of power. After a restart everythings fine, and then maybe 4 days later it happens again, but it doesn't bother me too much normally.

Other small things happen making things unsmooth, but I think all comptuers have problems somethimes so I'm not too worried about these.

3. I doubt the following are driver related but I have got a few other odd problems:

Loads of Pop-ups - this seems simple and obvious but I've asked a lot of experts and friends and with pop up blockers, extensions in firefox, getting rid of spyware (which seems to return in Spybot S+D even when I've immunized). So I've tried for at least 2 weeks to get rid of these popups but I've had no luck.

DNS Problems - BT have called it a fault on my line, but I am getting very inconsistent bouts of the Domain Name Server going down meaning I can ping the ip addresses and browse the internet by IP addresses (which is of course impossible)

I kinda realised that having 1 computer wouldn't be best for me and I should get a computer and a laptop, so even if it had worked fine, I would have probably sold it. I now of course majorly regret clean installing rather than just doing a dell pc restore. My hard drive is still loosing 10gb from the restore partition so surely there is a way I can carry it out even after clean installing? I should have thought more carefully about not having 2 computers before buying so yeah I guess i made a mistake.

So, thats what has happened so far, I guess I'm thinking about selling it now in order to complete my plans getting a desktop and eventually a more portable laptop. So all advice about the above problems, things I should do before selling, and any other info is much appreciated.

 

1. the sound issue: if your not having sound problems elseswhere (other dvds, etc.), i'd say the fault is the dvd.

2. not sure what you mean by "bright colors", but if it's what i think you mean, that sounds like either a driver issue or a codec issue.

3a. not sure what this could be. i would say a virus, but it sounds like you did a clean install so that's probably not the issue. sorry can't be more help here.

3b. pop-ups - purely a function of the browser, if using IE, download a pop up blocking utility. or switch to firefox.

DNS issues - could be your firewall, either the windows firewall or whatever 3rd party firewall you may be using.

HD space. i think the image partition is only 3 or 4 GBs. the other space lost is due to (1) the way GBs are calculated, 1024 vs. 1000 and the preinstalled software, XP alone takes about 1.5 GBs.

if you plan to sell, the only advice i would give is make sure you erase all your personal info from the machine before doing so.

 

Ok thanks, will do