Requesting assistance

Hello everyone, I'm having some issues with my Inspiron 1520 that started about 2 weeks ago and have changed a bit since.

Vista Home Premium 32-bit
2gb RAM
Samsung HDD
GeForce 8600M GT

Windows Defender disabled
No AV software


The first issue was it would start black screening after attempting to come back from the screen saver, I was hard reseting to bring it back. Reading another thread here suggested had I waited a considerable amount of time it might have come back on it's own but that's still not something it should do. It also gave me trouble installing updates, only downloading to 35% before locking up. Eventually it downloaded and installed the updates but only after 5-6 hard restarts.

A few days after this, it started hanging up on Windows boot, not even getting to the user login screen, just sitting there with the status bar going and going. I restarted in safe mode and disabled all non-essential start up .exe to no avail and then went back into safe mode and attempted to back up to a previous restore point. After restarting after the attempt to roll back it it tells me that it failed due to an unknown error, and continues to to so to this day.

Current problem: After messing with it, I tried the next day to work on it and it eventually booted completely into Windows, but only after I let it sit there for 6-7 minutes at the loading screen. Once in Windows, I could work for maybe 1-2 minutes before things would start locking up and the system becoming completely unusable. I got extremely frustrated and eventually gave up on it for a few days. Picking it up today it boots into Windows normally, so I attempted to surf with it to find a solution to my problem. Again after a minute or so it begins to lock up, so I start trying to find out system information so I can post to here for help. I discovered the entire system locks up but has brief flashes (for lack of a better term) where it works normally. Usually it's after it's locked up for 4-5 minutes and it only lasts long enough for me to do one thing (such as right clicking and selecting properties for instance). It never did bring up another web page after the first few, but I can access system files. If I ctrl-alt-del to try and check the task manager I get the message "Login process has failed to create the security options dialog", clicking ok dumps me back to desktop.

So, this is where I'm at and I'm stuck. Any information or insight anyone could provide I would appreciate. If you need any further information please let me know.

 

Have you tried a system restore? If you have a convenient restore point that you can try, that should be your first step. System Restore can work wonders... (sometimes)

 

Have you recovered any important data? That's the first thing to do... if you have an external drive or another computer you could move any important stuff to.

Now, this could either be a software issue or a hardware issue. It's sounding to me more like a hardware problem, but it could be a deep-seated problem with your Windows install. It doesn't sound like a virus, but it would be a good idea to use an AV program in the future.

One thing you could try is to run the Dell Diagnostics to see if it finds any problems with your hardware.

It would be good to do that, and then we can go from there.

Cheers...

He said that it "failed due to an unknown error."

 

Yes, I tried system restore. Second paragraph

Pixelot there's really no important data on there, I really don't want to do a wipe because I don't have a Vista install cd although at this point XP is looking better and better.

I'll try the diagnostic tool, if I can get it to come up on there.. it's currently locked up with the updates stalled at 46%.

 

Looks like there is a problem with the hard drive, running the diagnostic it failed it's DST short test with error code 0142
Also said - unit 1: Drive self test failed status byte = 70

Looking up the error code, the symptoms are exactly matching what's going on with my box. Letting it run the rest of the diagnostic. Thank you Pixelot for bringing this tool to my attention, guess I should have read the manual eh? lol

 

An odd thing, if I work in safe mode I experience none of the problems. Would this indicate it's a software issue?

 

Hmmm. So safe mode is now working fine. I don't know... sounds like a bad hard drive. I suppose running safe mode might minimalize the effects of that, but it does sound like the hard drive is bad.