Problems with my computer please help ?

Question

I am having a lot of problems with my computer and I’m not sure if one thing that is causing it or if it is a number of problems. The first problem I noticed is when I tried to start Windows media player 11 I would click on the shortcut and the hourglass pops up and nothing happens after that so I waited and left it over night and still nothing. So I uninstalled WMP11 and it told me I had to roll it back to WMP10 so I did. I restarted then tried to open WMP10 and a message came up saying something was wrong with WMP and click ok to fix it so I did all it did was upgrade back to WMP11 and I got the same problem it wouldn’t open. So I go in add and remove programs and roll back WMP11 to WMP10 then uninstall WMP10 then install WMP11 and still the same problem. Next I tried to do a system restore but system restore will not open. I checked to see if other stuff will open like defrag and it did. So now I have WMP11 not opening and system restore not opening even in “safe mode”. I run Norton it finds nothing and I run Spybot S&D it finds nothing.

So now I’m thinking maybe I should try to run windows update I open IE (which I don’t ever use since I have Mozilla Firefox) and I notice the page was showing up blank. I browsed some websites and tried to run the Microsoft OneCare Tune-up thing and there was no button. I go to YouTube and the videos are not there just a black space and no warning about needing flash player (which I knew I already had). No flash content was showing up I tried to go to the adobe website and download the latest flash player and the download window wouldn’t pop up. Now I don’t even know where to start I have run out of ideas please help me. I’m thinking of doing a full store but I don’t have anywhere to back up my 200+ gig of data. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

virus. reinstall windows. BTW I've done so without formatting using an upgrade CD.

Answer 2

Re-install your windows OS... ti make all things normal...

Answer 3

First of all, I would find a way to backup your data ASAP as it could be either signs of a virus or possibly degradation of your hard drive. Often the symptoms of a crashing hard drive begin with little things like this, and if you keep writing data to the hard drive it will eventually cause it to crash (A crash is actually physical damage to the platters of a drive which results in PERMANENT data loss that cannot be recovered).This is hopefully not the case, but still it will not hurt to backup the data in any case.

If it is a software issue you might have to reinstall your operating system using restore disks.  Again, backup your user data before doing this. It will reformat your drive and remove the file map, so you will not be able to access the files again without using special software.

It sounds like there is some severe corruption within the operating system or program files that is causing these problems. If a clean install does not fix the problem then you can assume it is probably a hard drive problem.  Either way, again, backup your files as soon as possible.