hi, i am not very experienced w/computers. i recently reinstalled disks to restore factory settings. i am original owner of emachines MT1440, w/XP home edition (2001). 1.4 ghz. and 128 mb ram. not very large capacity but it has always worked fine for my personal use.

upon reinstall, i sought to apply the patches to protect computer, part of this was the (what i think is ) the relatively new windows authenticity verification. seemed to go through okay, i applied the service pack 2.

the problem i have is that soon after during regular use, the mouse and keyboard will lock up, also it reboots itself (these seem to be two separate issues - i don't know). when attempt to restart the computer in safe mode i was getting a window that basically said that couldn't log on to user profile as part of the reg was missing, upon clicking would have the basic startup screen, then the mouse will disappear, and or sometimes the computer will shut itself off.

due to this problem i have tried to reinstall the disks several times. i am not able to use this computer for this question, but it is currently up and running i have not installed any updates or linked to internet with it.

is this fixable or do i have to write it off? i really can't be without a computer as i do some contract work from the home.

your assistance is appreciated.

I have a similar problem and Im as lost as you are . Help appreciated!!

i never did recieve any advice on how to fix this problem. I would like to get that computer up and running again. so if anyone has suggestions. i am social worker not computer tech, but i think that there is a conflict that is created after microsoft conducts an authenication certificate, it says it accepts it, but i don't know. any one have suggestions i would most appreciate.

Hello, can I start by asking you why you wanted to restore your old factory settings?

Also, what is the state of your PC. Is it actually running properly without the updates?

It might be worth checking for any driver updates for your PC hardware first.

Regards

Martin

i bought it in 2001, it was so full of stuff ran slow, seemed to work fine other than that. I was trying to get a few more miles out of it. Use it for research/school work mostly. i know it could use more memory, but it seemed to work fine before with the school work stuff, i cleaned it up in hopes i could just do some more of the same. there had been a lot of music files, and i wanted to clean up the registry.

I don't know how to do hardware updates.... (that is what to look for when searching) i think my new computer w/vista has a place to search for hardware updates. i don't know if this older unit has the same feature.

If you've got an XP CD, boot from it and when given the option, access the recovery console by pushing 'R'.
When it's loaded, type CHKDSK /r and see if it fixes any errors. When you've finished, re-boot your PC and then turn off the automatic updates.
You can attempt to update your drivers by going to the Control Panel>System>Hardware>Device Manager. Double click on your hardware devices and update your drivers ( you'll need to be connected to the internet ). Just try your keyboard\mouse and monitor for example.

Go to microsoft and download service pack 2 and install it, see how it runs and let me know if it still locks up.

Regards

Martin