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I have a friend with a Dell laptop, only 3 months old, with WIN XP
Home Edition.
It came with a free 6 month Earthlink subscription, which all the
sudden as of a week ago will not connect. It just says "Connecting"
sometimes for 10 minutes or more. Sometimes after clicking cancel, it
will close the window and then you hear the modem dial and a
connection made, but no web page will come up.
At the same time, after a while program icons on the desktop stop
being able to be opened. Clicking them does nothing, and the
right-click menu doens't even list Open as an option. When using the
Start button to try to open a program, one of 3 things happens- either
the program name says (empty) next to it, or the listing cannot be
high-lighted and therefore not selected, or it can be selected and
clicked, but still nothing happens. This happens with every
icon/program. Then when trying to shut down, choosing Shutdown on the
start menu brings up the Swith User menu, with no option to shut down.
When choosing either Log Off or Switch User, the window simply goes
away and nothing happens. WHen I try CNTL-ALT-DEL I get an error that
says this program can't open.

This is very frustrating and makes no sense to me. Is there any thing
that can be done other than reinstall Windows? (or better yet, a more
reliable OS).
It has Virus protection and I ran a tool that cleaned out the
registry, but nothing seems to make any difference.

(fear) wrote in news:ceb367c.0405171500.405eb56
@posting.google.com:

> I have a friend with a Dell laptop, only 3 months old, with WIN XP
> Home Edition.
> It came with a free 6 month Earthlink subscription, which all the
> sudden as of a week ago will not connect. It just says "Connecting"
> sometimes for 10 minutes or more. Sometimes after clicking cancel, it
> will close the window and then you hear the modem dial and a
> connection made, but no web page will come up.
> At the same time, after a while program icons on the desktop stop
> being able to be opened. Clicking them does nothing, and the
> right-click menu doens't even list Open as an option. When using the
> Start button to try to open a program, one of 3 things happens- either
> the program name says (empty) next to it, or the listing cannot be
> high-lighted and therefore not selected, or it can be selected and
> clicked, but still nothing happens. This happens with every
> icon/program. Then when trying to shut down, choosing Shutdown on the
> start menu brings up the Swith User menu, with no option to shut down.
> When choosing either Log Off or Switch User, the window simply goes
> away and nothing happens. WHen I try CNTL-ALT-DEL I get an error that
> says this program can't open.
>
> This is very frustrating and makes no sense to me. Is there any thing
> that can be done other than reinstall Windows? (or better yet, a more
> reliable OS).


> It has Virus protection and I ran a tool that cleaned out the
> registry, but nothing seems to make any difference.
>

If the O/S is not secure, than how can anything else on the machine be
secure?

Everything is secondary to the O/S. Secure it is the first step. The second
step is to have the user use common sense and not have *happy* fingers*
clicking on unknown things that can lead to issues with the O/S ---
practice safe hex.

The XP (NT based O/S) is rock solid, if one knows what he or she is doing
with it.

You should reinstall it, secure it, and forget about the issues.

http://www.uksecurityonline.com/index5.php

Duane

perhaps you need to reinstall your modem drivers. Let the dealer do this
because you will void your warranty if you diy.
AF
"fear" <> wrote in message
news: ...
> I have a friend with a Dell laptop, only 3 months old, with WIN XP
> Home Edition.
> It came with a free 6 month Earthlink subscription, which all the
> sudden as of a week ago will not connect. It just says "Connecting"
> sometimes for 10 minutes or more. Sometimes after clicking cancel, it
> will close the window and then you hear the modem dial and a
> connection made, but no web page will come up.
> At the same time, after a while program icons on the desktop stop
> being able to be opened. Clicking them does nothing, and the
> right-click menu doens't even list Open as an option. When using the
> Start button to try to open a program, one of 3 things happens- either
> the program name says (empty) next to it, or the listing cannot be
> high-lighted and therefore not selected, or it can be selected and
> clicked, but still nothing happens. This happens with every
> icon/program. Then when trying to shut down, choosing Shutdown on the
> start menu brings up the Swith User menu, with no option to shut down.
> When choosing either Log Off or Switch User, the window simply goes
> away and nothing happens. WHen I try CNTL-ALT-DEL I get an error that
> says this program can't open.
>
> This is very frustrating and makes no sense to me. Is there any thing
> that can be done other than reinstall Windows? (or better yet, a more
> reliable OS).
> It has Virus protection and I ran a tool that cleaned out the
> registry, but nothing seems to make any difference.

"Ashton Fagg" <> wrote in news:40aaf902$1
@news.comindico.com.au:

> perhaps you need to reinstall your modem drivers. Let the dealer do this
> because you will void your warranty if you diy.
> AF

I wish some dealer would tell me that as all Hell would hit the fan on that
one. <g>

Duane

Ashton Fagg wrote:
> perhaps you need to reinstall your modem drivers. Let the dealer do this
> because you will void your warranty if you diy.
> AF
>

Reinstalling (modem) drivers will not void the warranty unless you have
some crap dealer agreement.

Stuart

fear wrote:

> I have a friend with a Dell laptop, only 3 months old, with WIN XP
> Home Edition.
> It came with a free 6 month Earthlink subscription, which all the
> sudden as of a week ago will not connect. It just says "Connecting"
> sometimes for 10 minutes or more. Sometimes after clicking cancel, it
> will close the window and then you hear the modem dial and a
> connection made, but no web page will come up.
> At the same time, after a while program icons on the desktop stop
> being able to be opened. Clicking them does nothing, and the
> right-click menu doens't even list Open as an option. When using the
> Start button to try to open a program, one of 3 things happens- either
> the program name says (empty) next to it, or the listing cannot be
> high-lighted and therefore not selected, or it can be selected and
> clicked, but still nothing happens. This happens with every
> icon/program. Then when trying to shut down, choosing Shutdown on the
> start menu brings up the Swith User menu, with no option to shut down.
> When choosing either Log Off or Switch User, the window simply goes
> away and nothing happens. WHen I try CNTL-ALT-DEL I get an error that
> says this program can't open.
>
> This is very frustrating and makes no sense to me. Is there any thing
> that can be done other than reinstall Windows? (or better yet, a more
> reliable OS).
> It has Virus protection and I ran a tool that cleaned out the
> registry, but nothing seems to make any difference.

Contact Earthlink to see what they can do, they can go through the
settings and confirm they are correct and also tell you whether there is
a problem at their end.

Also update the virus program before running a scan and also check for
spyware too (use Ad-aware, Spybot, Spywareblaster). Uninstall and
reinstall the modem drivers or find a newer driver and try to update them.

Stuart