Hi Guys,
I'm running a Patriot 3440E with an Intel Pent 3.4 Ghz processor and 1 gig RAM with XP-Home, SP 2.
The PC is about 1.5 years old and pretty stable and behaves well.
NOD32 is the AV suite; I run the free ADaware, and free ZA plus other little anti-spammers.
START SNAG
Of late I have noticed some lack of the normal start-up sounds from within the PC desk-top box......
eg it normally starts with the fan sort of over-revving and then settling down within 2 seconds to a steady pace, and the normal internal fine searching sounds.
Some of the noises (presumably the HDD) are not always on tune with the normal 'chuntering' at times and I know the noise/tune is not quite what it should be (like we know the sound of the car starting; or the jet engine reaching self-sustaining RPM), and the machine gets as far as the point where one selects the "User" - at which point the mouse arrow when moved over the "User" hotspot portion one normally clicks for the PC to get going, NOTHING happens!
It normally highlights as the mouse enters the hypertext hot-spot before one 'clicks' - but on these recent bad days it does not.
I can only revive the PC by doing a 'hard shut down' then attempting the restart after it has settled and quite. Sometimes, it takes 3 such starts to get the PC moving past the "User" selection. All very worrying
May I ask the experts here what they reckon the snag is?
Is it some pre-warning of a HDD failure or some software glitch preventing the start sequence to finalise, because the start-up has been compromised a few times now by something?
Your help and advice will be most welcome chaps.
Cheers
TG