[tallguylehigh]

I would really like your help with this- I am at my wits end.

For information, this is on a Dell XPS M140 laptop running Windows XP.

A couple of weeks ago I was searching the net and everything froze. Trying to shut down properly, NOTHING would work, including the power button. So, foolishly most likely, I removed and reconnected the battery to shut down and restart.

Well, since then my computer has been unbearably slow. Every task from start-up (20 minutes, if at all) to loading Firefox (10 minutes) in awful. There are times where nothing even loads, all I see is my background and a cursor, nothing more. On the lucky chance that I do get everything up and running, it is slow to the point where even the clock is behind other clocks around me (cable box, other laptop) by 8-20 or so minutes.

I loaded in safe mode with mixed results and loaded in a command prompt to run defrag, where I didnt see anything unusual and scandisk, where it gave me the error of "scandisk is not recignized as an internal or external..." I have even tried to download Spybot to see if there is something lurking, but when I download it and try to run it, I get an error saying that "the files have been corrupted, try again" or something along those lines.

I would appreciate any help that you could give me.

Thanks in advance

[Megabite]

If you have the Operating System disk put it in your drive

• From the Start menu, select Run.
• In the Open field, type sfc /scannow (Note: There is a space between sfc and /scannow)
• Select the OK button.
• Follow the prompts throughout the System File Checker process.
• Reboot the computer when System File Checker completes.

[tallguylehigh]

Unfortunately, I do not have the operating system disk with me.

I might be able to find it if I dug around if I absolutely need it though.

[Rich-M]

You need to run checkdisk not scandisk...Go "Run", "cmd" and then hit enter and in the window that pops up type in: chkdsk /r . You will be told this cannot be done without a reboot. Would you like to do that then type in "Y" and hit enter. Then reboot and checkdisk will run and repair drive.