Dell Dimension 4600
3.06Ghz
512Mb
80GB HDD (37GB used)
Win XP SP2
Various peripherals
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OK, my short question is: Format or No Format?
The long story is:
This is a system I bought just over 3 years ago. It was fine for the first year, then started slowing down. This was before I discovered anti-virus, anti-spyware and so on. Once I (thought I) knew what I was doing, I formatted the whole thing, and having realised I'd omittted to backup all my drivers etc, it took me weeks to get the whole thing working again. Since then, it's generally been fine.
The last few months, however, it's been playing up. I now have Avast as my virus protection, I have a router which acts as a very good NAT barrier, I have Windows Firewall permanently on, and I run Ad-Aware and Spybot once a week. None of these show any problems, but the whole system is starting to "fall over" with alarming regularity. I've even had the dreaded BSOD on more than one occasion recently, which I was used to with my last system (98SE) but I'm told is indicative of serious problems in XP.
The big issue with all this is that I take my computer out 2-3 times a month to use when I'm DJing. "Mixmeister" is probably the one piece of software I use more than anything else (except Firefox). Now, even that won't run without crashing out, so essentially I can't work. I've tried un-and-re-installing it, but with no success - it hangs every time.
My question then, is this: is there a way of downloading all my XP updates and patches so I can reinstall from scratch without having to get them all from Windows Update? My reason for asking is because my XP disc is completely legit (OEM) but it's from 2003 and therefore predates even the SP2 update.
Also - obviously I have something like 15,000 mp3s which it is critical to me to save. I have copied them onto DVD-Rs, but with a system I know is unstable how can I verify that they've been backed up satisfactorily?
Any advice is welcomed... particularly from Igorian as you've been a star to me in the past.....
Cheers,
Simon
3.06Ghz
512Mb
80GB HDD (37GB used)
Win XP SP2
Various peripherals
-----
OK, my short question is: Format or No Format?
The long story is:
This is a system I bought just over 3 years ago. It was fine for the first year, then started slowing down. This was before I discovered anti-virus, anti-spyware and so on. Once I (thought I) knew what I was doing, I formatted the whole thing, and having realised I'd omittted to backup all my drivers etc, it took me weeks to get the whole thing working again. Since then, it's generally been fine.
The last few months, however, it's been playing up. I now have Avast as my virus protection, I have a router which acts as a very good NAT barrier, I have Windows Firewall permanently on, and I run Ad-Aware and Spybot once a week. None of these show any problems, but the whole system is starting to "fall over" with alarming regularity. I've even had the dreaded BSOD on more than one occasion recently, which I was used to with my last system (98SE) but I'm told is indicative of serious problems in XP.
The big issue with all this is that I take my computer out 2-3 times a month to use when I'm DJing. "Mixmeister" is probably the one piece of software I use more than anything else (except Firefox). Now, even that won't run without crashing out, so essentially I can't work. I've tried un-and-re-installing it, but with no success - it hangs every time.
My question then, is this: is there a way of downloading all my XP updates and patches so I can reinstall from scratch without having to get them all from Windows Update? My reason for asking is because my XP disc is completely legit (OEM) but it's from 2003 and therefore predates even the SP2 update.
Also - obviously I have something like 15,000 mp3s which it is critical to me to save. I have copied them onto DVD-Rs, but with a system I know is unstable how can I verify that they've been backed up satisfactorily?
Any advice is welcomed... particularly from Igorian as you've been a star to me in the past.....
Cheers,
Simon