On Fri, 5 May 2017 09:17:30 -0400, "dadiOH" wrote:


"Micky" wrote in message
.. .
A winXP question, but a serious one, so I'm asking for help from
v10-hotshots too.

My Acer Netbook (about 8 to 10 years old, model not remembered but on
request) has been working fine, except for the usual Firefox too many
tabs problem. This time I closed Windows normally and the next time I
tried to boot it, 10 or 15 minutes went by and nothing showed on the
screen. Nothing on the screen when I started, in the middle, or when
I got tired and turned the computer off.

Turned it off with the power button, and on restart, it did nothing
again, for 10 or 15 minutes. Much of the time the harddrive light was
on steadily. Sometimes it flickered and then went back to steady.

On the third try it started, but took much longer than normal, and it
displayed nothing along the way until the very end it displayed a blue
screen with a couple horizontal bars and Windows is Starting.

It's hard to believe but at the start it didn't even display the
startup options to go into the BIOS, etc.

But everything worked fine once it did start. After 8 hours of use,
the web browser (SeaMonkey) was slowing down, so I restarted it.

Same problems. Finally started on 3rd try, but took 10 minute to do
so. Working fine again.

What is the problem? What to do? I'm on vacation and if the whole
thing fails, I don't have equipment to "fix it" or even salvage data
from the HDD.)

Obviously, it is having trouble reading the HD. Could be the HD itself,
mobo, other. If it were me I would avoid using the computer til it could be
checked out. If I just had to use it I would be copying off my personal
stuff to a thumb drive.

Good advice, I'm sure. Most of that is already taken care of.
Usenet will be duplicarted when I get home, except for the outbox,
which I don't think I know how to merge anyhow. (Although I asked and
maybe I got a good answer. Have to read that again.)

Combining Eudora mailboxes is easy and I'm not deleting any mail off
the server so all my incoming will be there to dl, and I set up the
stationery so that I'm sending a copy of all my outgoing to myself.
When I get back, if this netbook has failed and I can't copy its
outbox to the home PC outbox, I will filter email to me that's also
from me into my outbox.

That leaves the bookmarks and url history, and I knew how to back up
Firefox, and I brought with me the bat file that copies them to
another drive, but I don't know the file names for Sea Monkey, that
I'm using now and which works a lot better in XP on a netbook that has
only 1gig RAM.

Are the file names the same, by any chance?