Computer trouble?

[Liberi Fatali]

This grandad I used to work with (he's about 65 years old) has been having some computer trouble. Apparently his grandaughter installed some game on his computer -- he called it 'Craftwar', so I assume he meant Warcraft. He tells me that his colour is set at '4 bit', and there's no other options (no 16 or 32). His wife gave him the idea to 'restore' his computer to before his grandaughter messed with it (because the colours USED to be good). So he went back to a few weeks prior and then restarted his computer. Now when he tries to boot it back up, the colours are fixed, but nothing loads up on the desktop. He said it loads his background up, but nothing else happens.

I'm going to go take a look at it tomorrow, but I honestly have no idea how to remedy this. If his icons or start menu don't load up at all, how do I fix it? Does anyone have any helpful hints? It's not a Mac -- that's about all I know about it.

[Drew2]

System Restore is a joke. I don't know why people use it. It's like putting a band-aid on a severed limb.

There's not a large chance that Warcraft (or any real, non-downloaded-off-the-internet game) could have messed up a computer THAT badly. Something else probably occured. Kids + Internet = clicking on things they shouldn't. More likely than not, you'll have to just dig out the restore CDs and start from scratch. It sounds like Explorer got messed up somehow, which is never a good thing, nor easy to fix in most cases.

Of course, this is all largely based on speculation, as the computer is not sitting in front of me and I can't see exactly how it is behaving.

[StrayRogue]

Reformat.

[Bobmuhthol]

<<System Restore is a joke. I don't know why people use it. It's like putting a band-aid on a severed limb.>>

If the problem is cosmetic, it sure as hell is not. I don't have to use it anymore because I've become successful at operating a computer, but it's fixed a lot of problems for me, especially with installed programs.

[Drew2]

PS- Is Stray's avatar SUPPOSED to turn me on?

[Sylvan Dreams]

When the OS is up, open the task manager and see if explorer.exe is running or not. If it's not, go to FILE - NEW TASK and run explorer.exe. That will at least get the desktop opened.

As for a fix, the only fix that I know is for Windows 2k, but it may work for XP as well. Open a command prompt, type in cmd, go to the SystemRoot folder, rename the Shdocvw.dll to Shdocvw.old (you can use the ren command: ren Shdocvw.dll Shdocvw.old). Reboot.

I take no responsibility if your computer ends up any worse, heh.

[Sean of the Thread]

<<System Restore is a joke. I don't know why people use it. It's like putting a band-aid on a severed limb.>>

If the problem is cosmetic, it sure as hell is not. I don't have to use it anymore because I've become successful at operating a computer, but it's fixed a lot of problems for me, especially with installed programs.


Bob.. please stay out of computer problem threads.


You're computer useless.

[Bobmuhthol]

Whatever you say, dickhead.

[Back]

The problem is that its a PC.

[Gan]

:rofl:

I had you pegged for a mac (beatnik) person.

[Back]

:rofl:

I had you pegged for a mac (beatnik) person.

Heh, and I bet it had nothing to do with income brackets.

Because all us communist pot-smoking bongo-playing freelove conspiracy-theoristic facial haired hipsters use Macs.

[Sean of the Thread]

Whatever you say, dickhead.

Okay Mr. millenium edition.

You can barely handle a sophmore class of 300 let alone anything to do with at the computer help desk.

[StrayRogue]

Reformat.

[Skeeter]

throw the keyboard on the ground. step on it then run over someone's cat.

works every time.

[Wezas]

Get a CRT monitor, throw that flat panel away.