Reformatting Inspiron 6400?

Hello,

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 (about 4.5 years old), running on Windows XP Home. Up until the last 6 months or so, it's given me no trouble whatsoever. Recently, however, it's been slowing down and freezing on me quite consistently. It started in graphics-intensive games, but now I can barely get through an entire movie without it freezing and me having to reboot. It usually starts with the sound going fuzzy for some reason. I defrag and virus scan regularly, but I've never reformatted my hard drive. Do you think reformatting it or anything would make a difference, or has my computer simply reached its limit? I know, at best, that fixing the problem would only be delaying the inevitable of having to purchase a new PC, but I can still hope that that's a while away... Thanks in advance for any help!

Istari

 

first thing i would do is scan the hard drive for bad sectors, when you boot up, run the dell diagnostics. Run a full diagnostic and see what errors it kicks up.it'll also tell you if anything else is malfunctioning, and then we can decide if its a simple repair or something much worse

 

Thanks for your suggestion! So I did the full diagnostics test (which took far, far too long...), and it didn't come up with any errors. Is there anything else I can do to solve my problem? Would reformatting still do anything? Or is my PC merely on its last legs? Thanks again,

 

I'd I try reformatting and reinstalling Windows. Here's a great guide for the Dell.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ns-please-post-all-format-questions-here.html

And another...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/not...p-installation-guide.html#sec:config:services

 

Thanks! Yeah, I did decide to reformat, and (after a loooong session of re-installations and updates) everything seems to be running great!