Monday night after returning from work, several problems cropped up on my computer all at the same time after I restarted it. My computer had been running somewhat slow before then, but virus scans didn't detect anything wrong. Here are the problems that I've been having since I restarted my comp:
Each of these problems happened simultaneously, so I'm assuming they have a common origin. I ran another virus scan after the problems started Monday night, but again, no problems were detected. I'm guessing it's a hardware problem. I don't really know much about computers, and using all the advice of all the help, support, and troubleshooting guides I've seen has been unable to resolve the problem. If someone here can help me out, I would be truly appreciative.
Thanks ahead of time. Later.
- The first thing I noticed was that my monitor's resolution changed from its standard 1024x768 to 800x600, which made everything appear big and wouldn't fit my wallpaper properly. Also, all my icons were reset to their default positions. I managed to fix these problems and my screen resolution and icon arrangement has stayed normal since, even after resetting my computer during my attempts to fix it.
- My computer has been running very slowly, far more so than before Monday night. It seems like it takes five times as long to load anything (programs, web pages, etc.). It also takes far more time than normal to restart my computer (it even failed to reboot once, and I was forced to unplug and replug my computer to get it to start up).
- Whenever I scroll down the page in any window (in IE, Word, Frontpage, or any other program, it does so slowly and there's this weird "ripple" or "wave" effect to the scrolling motion. It does this whether I use a window's scroll bar or my mouse's scroll wheel. Also, a similar problem happens whenever I drag a window across the screen.
- Real Player has been playing video files slowly, and the picture was all pixelated. (This was the first program I used after restarting my computer.)
- Whenever I tried to fix the previous two problems, I started by consulting Window's Help & Support as well as several websites. The most common solution given (including by WH&S) was to uninstall my video controller/driver (via Device Manager) and then reinstall it (via Hardware Wizard). My video controller is the Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV graphics controller/Intel Extreme Graphics driver, which came as my computer's preinstalled graphics hardware.
Whenever I try to reinstall it, Hardware Wizard said the following:
Each of these problems happened simultaneously, so I'm assuming they have a common origin. I ran another virus scan after the problems started Monday night, but again, no problems were detected. I'm guessing it's a hardware problem. I don't really know much about computers, and using all the advice of all the help, support, and troubleshooting guides I've seen has been unable to resolve the problem. If someone here can help me out, I would be truly appreciative.
Thanks ahead of time. Later.