New Computer keeps crashing

Hi all

I don't know if anyone can help me, I have just bought a recon Packard Bell for my kids (IMEDI2569) and installed it yesterday. However, the computer keeps crashing after about 2-3 minutes of being switched on. Ctrl-Alt-Del doesn't work, it completely freezes. The only thing that I have noticed on some occasions of switching it off is a Program not responding dialog box with the program ccypp - although the "y" on the screen is upside down but I can't replicate it by typing here. This doesn't look right to me - has anyone got any ideas as to what is going wrong and how to rectify it. I have contacted the place I bought it too but have had a lot of help here in the past.

Thanks in advance

Jacqui

 

Please don't interpret this as a totally negative slam but the best decision you could make would be to return this machine and either get your money back or get a different machine. You are virtually assured of nothing but problems and one can not get drivers or anything else for Packard Bell computers. I believe this was just given the distinguished honor by PC World Magazine of being one of the 10 worst tech products of all time. Yup, you guessed it - it was rated the absolute worst. Here's a taste of their review:

"Between 1994 and 1996 the company was a perennial bottom dweller in PC World's reliability and service ratings. One out of six Packard Bell machines sold at retail was returned by dissatisfied customers--more than twice the industry average.

And odds are good that if you bought a new Packard Bell system in 1994 or 1995, at least some of its components had been previously owned. The company was sued several times for selling used parts as new, ultimately paying out millions of dollars in settlements. "

Sorry, but you'd be well advised to cut and run while you still can.

 

Thanks so much for your help. I finally rang PC World where I bought it and asked for their help. It took out the wireless card that I had installed and did an F11 on startup to restore to "factory" settings. I did get one error message to do with SnapSys but it worked fine then but wouldn't shut down. Today it seemed to be completely fine so I tried the card again. I could install the software/drivers and then the card and completed the software install. The card could not see my wireless network that it could see yesterday and then the computer started freezing again. The network card is a Netgear WPN311g which I already have successfully installed on my own computer. I am running XP Media centre which we will change to XP Pro as soon as I get the disks from DH. I did a quick search on the internet and it seems like there may be a history of this with different Netgear cards but nowhere could I see a definitive solution, or one that I understood anyway. Can anyone help - PLEASSSEEEE - the kids are beginning to stress me waiting on their computer

 

Grrrrrr!!

Give up - got so fed up with all this that I decided to go back to wired network instead. So I wired a network cable between mine and the kids (mine still connects wirelessly). I then lost internet connection on mine and both LAN connections said limited or no connectivity. Haven't got enough computer savvy to have a clue what to do and was about to give up when I decided to try to connect the kids computer directly to the wireless router via the network cable. BINGO - internet on both and I can see the kids computer from mine (need to check it the other way though). Well, its not the ideal result but will do a make-shift. If anyone can still help me with the network card issue I would be hugely grateful.

Thanks

Jacqui

 

Thanks guys for your input. Sorry Pete that I didn't post about the network card - I didn't even consider that that could be causing the error, I guess that is a result of basic computer knowledge. I will make sure that I put ALL details in if I post again and try not to do that typical woman thing of expecting guys to know what is on my mind

Thanks again

Jacqui