Having some serious computer problems

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2007-06-22 12:58pm

I have a Compaq Presario C300 Laptop the charger of which broke around the end of April. I finally got a replacement charger for it this week but I've been facing some serious problems (which I never had before.)

To start, on boot-up the laptop will freeze after I log into windows. Usually it works fine for about thirty seconds and everything will load up but then everything will freeze except the mouse cursor which takes about another thirty more seconds to freeze. When I first started it up after getting the charger it would simply freeze right when it logged into windows without the taskbar fully loaded but it doesn't do that anymore, much.

Anyway, I got lucky one time where everything loaded up correctly (on about the sixth failed boot attempt) and after that the problem came back worse. So the next time I booted up I opened up Task Manager right away and noticed that I had about six instances of 'svchost.exe' (which I knew to be microsoft originated) running and started shutting down the extra processes. And, surprise, everything worked well. But on the next boot up where I did the same thing I opened up my wireless network connection to try to see what networks were available and was told that windows couldn't configure the connection. So I rebooted, and opened up the wireless connection at the get-go and it worked... and then the computer froze because I forgot to close down svchost. So I rebooted and noticed that the wireless network puts up the error message only after I've shut down svchost, which is odd because it didn't do it the first time I closed it down.

To further complicate things my sound no longer works apparently. It worked fine for a while but then the sound speaker icon would remain in the start tray but when I clicked on it to change the volume it said that it couldn't find any mixer, and now it's completely disappeared. I've been through the Sounds and Audio Devices control panel, but it claims everything is working just fine, and the real annoying thing is that windows sounds (mouse clicks, error noises, etc.) still work fine but nothing else does.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-06-22 01:01pm

o the next time I booted up I opened up Task Manager right away and noticed that I had about six instances of 'svchost.exe' (which I knew to be microsoft originated) running and started shutting down the extra processes.

Having multiple instances of svchost is normal, assuming they are all legitimate. Have you tried starting in Safe Mode?

Straha · Post by **Straha** » 2007-06-22 01:14pm

Bounty wrote:
o the next time I booted up I opened up Task Manager right away and noticed that I had about six instances of 'svchost.exe' (which I knew to be microsoft originated) running and started shutting down the extra processes.
Having multiple instances of svchost is normal, assuming they are all legitimate. Have you tried starting in Safe Mode?

Safe mode works.

Also, as a side note, from time to time the start bar will spontaneously revert from the XP Style it has into Windows 2000.

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2007-06-22 01:47pm

What's set to autostart on boot?

Zixinus · Post by **Zixinus** » 2007-06-22 05:29pm

Do a check on the hard-disk, complete with sector check, if you can. To me it sounds that some of your files may be corrupted somehow. Related to bad power adapter perhaps? Even if that idea is bullshit (might be), doing a sector check is not a bad idea if you have the time (do it during the night, while you are sleeping).