Computer Meltdown

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 12, 2012, 08:09 PM

I have a Dell Vostro 3550.

I'll tell you what happened.

Teusday morning it was working fine. So i played some halo 2 and copied some files, nothing i dont normally do.
I get home from school, and the internet is funny, so I restart the router twice and then restart my computer trying to fix the problem. When I try and log back into my computer (my account is a standard user) I get the message "could not contact system event notification service service." I call my father who knows a bit about computers, (although he still thinks computer games are a problem and always blames the errors on my computer games) and he thinks its a virus and tells me to shut down the internet and both of our computers. When he gets home he logs on to his administrator account and we notice a few things: the computer doesnt even know we have internet connections availible, windows firewall is off, AVG Security works fine, and control panel and windows explorer are kinda funny, and the computer is LAGGING LIKE HELL, I mean slower than my 2003 HP 560 desktop with half a gig of ram and a 600 mhz processor.

So I'm convinced it's not a virus or otherwise it would want to stay connected to the internet and AVG still works, and we looked up on the other computer some solutions associated with the system notification error thing, which included command prompt commands 'netsh' and 'winsock reset', and the command 'sfc /scannow', along with a system restore, and none of that worked. When reading the windows support thread and stuff it seemed only people who had dell computers got the problem, and most of them had Aero (which i dont have). Also it seems that nothing i did could have caused the problem, so its likely another error with windows update (which often gives me blue screens of death because it cant install the updates properly and then it has to restor the computer because im not allowed to make changes to my hard drive.)

Any help?

**Bolkonsky** · April 12, 2012, 09:44 PM

Format, reinstall Windows.

If you're feeling corageous, try manually starting the service in services.msc

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 13, 2012, 06:22 AM

Originally Posted by Bolkonsky

Format, reinstall Windows.

If you're feeling corageous, try manually starting the service in services.msc

Yeah... Reinstalling Windows 7

ed it up even worse. We're trying something ill try and get back to you guys tomorrow on it.

**Ishan** · April 13, 2012, 03:20 PM

Originally Posted by Magister Militum Flavius Aetius

Reinstalling Windows 7

ed it up even worse.

Uh huh.
Then call someone that knows how to deal with this. Re-installing windows will fix any program error or corruption because you have wiped it clean, unless like phier said the problem lies in your hardware or you don't know how to install drivers properly.

**Taiji** · April 13, 2012, 03:32 AM

Type msconfig in the program search thing, launch it, dot diagnostic startup, restart, and test.

If it solved the problem then something loading up when you start your PC is 'messing stuff up'.

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 13, 2012, 07:12 AM

Hey what's out there on the market for new computers? Because the damage is pretty much irreversable.

Is the DV6T still a good buy?

**Taiji** · April 13, 2012, 09:57 AM

Did you repartition the disk before reinstalling?

**Phier** · April 13, 2012, 10:32 AM

Unless your damage is hardware related this makes no sense.

Format C:
Install windows.

You may need to install mobo drivers which I would hope came with your computer.

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 13, 2012, 10:59 AM

Well what happened was we put in the windows 7 re-installation disc we got with the computer, and went through the process. When I\it got to the point where it's supposed to say "Setting up windows for first use" the screenw ent black. I think it has something to do with the 1Gig GFX card because the Vostro 3550 uses a hybrid integrated 128MB card and a 1 GIG radeon cared, and I knew I'd have to reinstall the video drivers for the radeon card afterwards. But I can't do that because I don't think Windows can access the default Integrated card for my laptop to display the screen.

**Bolkonsky** · April 13, 2012, 12:14 PM

It has nothing to do with that. Did you format C:?

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 13, 2012, 01:07 PM

... what? I don't understand what you mean.

**Squid** · April 13, 2012, 02:41 PM

He likely has a recovery disc not a windows install disc, its a dell cookie cutter computer. He likely won't have the option to reformat the drive.

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 13, 2012, 04:56 PM

Yeah I don't have a disc to reformat the hard drive with, Squid is right. I just have the recovery disc.

I'll take it to a professional, we'll see if that works.

**Bolkonsky** · April 13, 2012, 05:55 PM

You can try making a bootable flashdrive with a partition manager on it, and formatting from that. Ubuntu live might be able to.

**Magister Militum Flavius Aetius** · April 13, 2012, 06:04 PM

Naw, my dad would not like me doing that, he has no Idea half the things I do on the internet. My family hides a lot of things from him so he doesn't flip out and then have an MS attack or something.

So we're gonna call Dell Tech support, the warranty is still good on the computer I think.