Problem with Dell 8200

LOL too funny!

I again had a problem starting the 8200 this morning
after pressing the Start button but after a few tries
it finally kicked in and booted up normally.

I upgraded the malwarebtyes program (within the
program itself) with no issues and it all seemed
fine.

I agree about opening up the 8200 again even for
the whining fan noise for the very reason you cited.
Better to leave well enough alone and just monitor it.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
LOL too funny!

I again had a problem starting the 8200 this morning
after pressing the Start button but after a few tries
it finally kicked in and booted up normally.

I upgraded the malwarebtyes program (within the
program itself) with no issues and it all seemed
fine.

I agree about opening up the 8200 again even for
the whining fan noise for the very reason you cited.
Better to leave well enough alone and just monitor it.

Robert


It's possible the power supply is going bad,
but your symptoms presented so far, don't
give me a reason to jump to that conclusion.

There is one sensitive technique that doesn't
require the usage of a multimeter. I've noticed,
on the failing power supplies here, that if you have
"constant speed fans", not speed controlled ones,
the fans start to "wander in speed" just before
the power supply fails. This means the +12V rail,
the output voltage varies a bit more than it
normally would. Since I set my computers up
with all constant speed fans, that makes it
a bit easier for me to use that monitoring
method.

Paul

Hello Paul,

It started normally again tonight, and ran
malwarebytes and Avast scans which completed.

In passing, was I correct about the Hotmail
icon toggling back and forth in the system
tray which no longer connects because its
obsolete?

I guess the only way I'll know for certain its
the power supply is if and when it stops working
altogether.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

It started normally again tonight, and ran
malwarebytes and Avast scans which completed.

In passing, was I correct about the Hotmail
icon toggling back and forth in the system
tray which no longer connects because its
obsolete?

I guess the only way I'll know for certain its
the power supply is if and when it stops working
altogether.

Robert

If you right-click on the Hotmail icon, the menu of what
program shows up ? Is it Windows Live Mail for Windows 7

http://superuser.com/questions/31213...dows-live-mail

There are a couple ways to do notification:

1) A program you install, sets up a service which logs into
the server and checks for mail. It may not be obvious,
looking in Task Manager, what is doing it. The thing could
be hiding in a SVCHOST. Or, the thing could use the Task Scheduler
(like the Apple Softwware Updates was doing on your machine).

2) A program you use, only drives the notification area
for as long as the program itself is running. If you exit
the program, it doesn't check for email and does not present
an icon. Check to see if Windows Live Mail is running all the
time, even though you're no longer using it, and you use
outlook.com via a web browser.

So if I was sitting there, first I'd try interacting directly
with the icon. To see if I could convince it to "identify itself"
and give me a program name. I would right-click and see what
menu items it offers.

If that won't work, I go to Control Panels and look in
Windows 7 "Programs and Features" and see if a special email
notification program is installed. I would not be trying to
uninstall Windows Live Mail, as it's a suite of tools and
I'm not sure exactly how you turn things on and off there.
And if we turn it off, you'll probably end up needing it
tomorrow :-)

I don't use email notification icons here, ever. I control
when the email program logs in. Email for me, is "always
a surprise".

*******

Checking a power supply, you can't always rely on simple
instruments for feedback. Like I was saying, the supply I
had which was failing, the DC voltages looked normal. If you
had an oscilloscope, you could look for excessive ripple
(AC riding on DC) as an indicator of trouble. Some power
supply faults are at high frequencies, and are indicative
or problems on the primary side of the supply.

I had a supply here, which did not fail in the conventional
sense. What the supply did, is it put "excessive RF noise"
on the AC power wires. I could see a pattern of lines on
an NTSC TV screen (tube TV set). As soon as I saw that,
I knew there was a conducted noise problem. Power supplies
have an analog filter on the primary side, just after the
power plug, and that's supposed to keep things clean
up to maybe 35MHz or so.

So a few days later, my ADSL modem loses sync. And it loses
sync every day at around the same time of day. And this
is the electrical noise from the ATX supply, going
back through the power wires and getting to the broadband
modem. So at that point, I swapped out the supply and
installed another one.

I don't really know exactly what is wrong with that supply.
If you look at the reference power supply schematic here...

http://www.pavouk.org/hw/en_atxps.html

the primary side drives transformer T3 with a push-pull
high frequency driver (low hundreds of kilohertz range).
The two transistors Q1 and Q2 are driven out of phase,
and should not overlap. I suspect something was wrong
in that supply, with how Q1 and Q2 were working. But
exactly what, "I'm not sticking my fingers in there" :-)
I have a phobia about high voltages.

Paul

Hello Paul,

I only asked the question out of curiosity. I
right clicked to icon and this is what it gave:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2z6htep.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/16077fa.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/34ry6vs.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/kavja.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/2hrin4n.jpg

I then went to my Dell Image Expert 2000 program
to view the images but it was gone! So I
re-installed it via disk and it also installed
Quicktime which the program needs which is
why I also have it on the 8500 as well.

How could two programs just disappear like that
especially since I don't use the program for
surfing the Internet? I only use it when I need
to show you a screenshot.

I appreciate the link but it was pretty difficult
to follow the power schematic and have no idea
what any of it means.

Thanks,
Robert

Actually, it may have been fault for not finding the
Dell Image Expert 2000 initially because it wasn't where I
thought it would be in the list. Yet when re-installing
it did not give me any warning message the program was
already installed.

Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

I only asked the question out of curiosity. I
right clicked to icon and this is what it gave:

http://i58.tinypic.com/2z6htep.jpg

http://i59.tinypic.com/16077fa.jpg

http://i57.tinypic.com/34ry6vs.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/kavja.jpg

http://i61.tinypic.com/2hrin4n.jpg

I then went to my Dell Image Expert 2000 program
to view the images but it was gone! So I
re-installed it via disk and it also installed
Quicktime which the program needs which is
why I also have it on the 8500 as well.

How could two programs just disappear like that
especially since I don't use the program for
surfing the Internet? I only use it when I need
to show you a screenshot.

I appreciate the link but it was pretty difficult
to follow the power schematic and have no idea
what any of it means.

Thanks,
Robert


I think your third picture holds the key.

http://i57.tinypic.com/34ry6vs.jpg

I presume Windows Messenger is a chat product,
for chatting with people. It probably isn't
Hotmail or Outlook, but maybe it accesses those
as well, just for kicks ?

What you do with that configuration page, really
depends on whether you use Windows Messenger
or not. It's also possible the Windows Messenger
software product would disappear, if you
downloaded and installed Skype (which is
used as a sort of replacement).

"Chat" would be a window you type into and
the other person types back. "Video Chat" would
be a session like video Skype. I've never used
any things like that with computers. The closest
I've come, is video conferencing over 2B+D links
(64Kilobit) to other parts of the world.

Since Microsoft likes to reuse product identifiers,
I'm not going to try to guess what that one does.
But the tick boxes in there, give you some ideas
as to how to control it.

I think I may have even disabled some software product
like that in the past, but it was so long ago I
don't remember the details. Anything that sits
in my notification area and "waves at me", is going
to "get the boot" when I catch it :-)

If a notification icon only alerts me when something
I want to know about happens, I'm all for it. When
the notification area is filled with repetitive
messages mainly concerned with computer maintenance
("have you brushed your teeth lately"), I want that
stuff *gone* :-)

Paul

Hello Paul,

Windows Messenger was one of the names Hotmail switched to
in their never ending changes. It use to be Hotmail and I didn't
make the changes or use Messenger for any chats. All I ever used
it for was when it notified me when I had mail and/or to log into
Hotmail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger

I have prefer not to use Skype and since I really don't need it any
longer maybe I should just delete Windows Messenger?

Robert

I went into add/remove programs just
out of curiosity and Windows Messenger
isn't listed.

http://i57.tinypic.com/3164s5f.jpg

http://i60.tinypic.com/ixtoat.jpg

I suppose I could just leave it alone
since it does nothing now anyway. If I
could remove it from the system tray I
would.

Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

Windows Messenger was one of the names Hotmail switched to
in their never ending changes. It use to be Hotmail and I didn't
make the changes or use Messenger for any chats. All I ever used
it for was when it notified me when I had mail and/or to log into
Hotmail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Messenger

I have prefer not to use Skype and since I really don't need it any
longer maybe I should just delete Windows Messenger?

Robert

Try turning it off.

Control Panels : Add or Remove Programs : Windows Components

http://i61.tinypic.com/1pxavl.jpg

Paul

Hello Paul,

That did it!

Thanks,
Robert

Hello Paul,

Well it worked for the Administrators Account
but when I logged onto the User Account it was
still there.

I would have thought by doing it on the Administrators
Account it would automatically remove it from the
Users Account as well? So I changed the User Account
to a Administrators Account and found it already un-ticked.

I re-started the computer and it was still there. So any
suggestions in removing it from the User Account?

Thanks,
Robert

Mark Twain wrote:
Hello Paul,

Well it worked for the Administrators Account
but when I logged onto the User Account it was
still there.

I would have thought by doing it on the Administrators
Account it would automatically remove it from the
Users Account as well? So I changed the User Account
to a Administrators Account and found it already un-ticked.

I re-started the computer and it was still there. So any
suggestions in removing it from the User Account?

Thanks,
Robert

Well that is weird. I would have thought removing it
as administrator, that would be for all accounts.

You can do the right-click thing on the notification
icon, and set it to not start at startup. Maybe that
will be enough.

Removing a Windows Feature, should be machine-wide...

Paul

Hello Paul,

I opened up Messenger and un-ticked everything
then restarted the computer and that did the
trick! I should have tried that last night.

In passing the User Account 'seemed' a bit slow
I think because I usually don't use it all that
much since I only go on the 8200 for updates and
scans on the Administrators Account.

It still boots normally, and seems to be running
OK so far......

Thanks,
Robert

Hello Paul,

Again the 8200 booted normally and
all seems fine.

I think I'll alternate logging in
to the Administrator Account and User
Account to improve response.

The light problem is gone for whatever
reason and so is the Live Messenger icon.
So all is good. If I have any other problems
I can post them.

Otherwise, unless you have other suggestions
I think were done and want to thank you once
again for all your good help.


Thanks,
Robert