[Pro]Problems after boot

After booting up, none of my programs will initialize. Explorer doesn't respond at all, and Quicken begins but then stops responing. Settings are unaccesable as well. I am trying to do a restore now, and task monitor shows that it is running, but it is running very slow because it shows 99% idle. I have been getting the Dell Monitoring System warning that it has detected that drive 0 on the primary EIDE controller is operating outside of normal specs, but my computer has just recently became inoperable. Any ideas?

Download and run the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility (they all run from floppy, so you don't need to get into Windows), and see what it reports. Here are the common ones:

Seagate Seatools

IBM / Hitachi Drive Fitness Test

Maxtor Maxblast 3

Maxtor PowerMax

Western Digital Software & Drivers

Fujitsu Utilities

ok, thanks. I downloaded the floppy, but how do I run it? I don't know how to run it.

You'll need one clean (empty) floppy in your drive; run the download, which will create the floppy. When done, reboot your computer with the floppy in the drive to run the diagnostic.

If necessary, change the boot order in the BIOS so that the floppy is before the HDD.

Hello Bobrobert :)
If you are struggling with that it might be easier for you to run the Dell Diagnostics.

Reboot and during bootup you will see options usually in the top right hand corner
F2
F12

Quickly click F12 and then choose "Dell Diagnostics"

Run the checks here
You might need your installation CD if you have one.

Elaine

Thanks lgbpop and dunedin,
Booting with the floppy that I downloaded results in "can't load DOS" message, and, so far, I haven't been able to get to Dell Diagnostics. I probably need to take this machine to a computer shop. :(

One more thing before I try to decide to take it to the shop...when I shut down, I get a message "AZWin Frame Window Failed to initialize" . From browsing google, I see that this may be have something to do with Acrobatic Reader. If so, this may be my problem, because my problem started when I tried to download an update for Acrobatic Reader.

Go into Safe Mode, ADD/REMOVE and uninstall Acrobatic Reader.

I gave up on Acrobatic Reader and use Foxit Reader .
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

Foxit does not take over your computer and slow it down.

I can't access settings, even in a safe mode. So...with the disk warning system saying that the EIDE is out of spec, along with not being able to access settings, outlook express, explorer, quicken, or anything but games and a few spreadsheets, I am thinking that I should just buy another computer. This one is Pentium III, operating at 500 mz.
But, in it's favor is Office Suite.

I guess that, going by your specs, the system is quite old.
If you are still using the original hard drive chances are it is dying.
There are tools that can be run from a bootable CD that can check the health of the hard drive, memory etc.
If you have an XP installation CD boot up with it and when you see the menu press the "R" key (for Recovery Console)
This will eventually take you to a DOS like prompt from where you can run various tools. chckdsk is one that will check your hard drive for errors.
You can also do a repair installation from the CD.
For using the recovery console and performing a repair installation do a google. There are loads of tutorials covering both.

Dell systems don't come with an XP CD FWIW.

When you made the floppy from the diagnostic software, did you indeed create the bootable floppy or just copy the downloaded file to a floppy. You need to double click the file you downloaded, and having a clean empty floppy in the floppy drive at the same time, the diagnostic software will create the files you need to test your drive.

Running chkdsk /r I doubt that you can run this option using your Dell recovery cd.

Thanks Whoozhe and Photolady,
Yes, the system is old. I received it second hand from business office and have been using it for about a year. I have no idea how long they used it. And, I don't have the cd.
I am using another computer for these inquiries and for downloading the floppies.
When I made the floppy, I just downloaded it.... So, thanks, I will follow Photoladies guidance on making it correctly.

OK, actually I found that I had downloaded the program to the hard drive. It is MaxBlaster4 floppy creator. I made another floppy this morning from the creator and booted up with it. Again, I get the error message "Cannot load DOS! any key to retry"
The floppy drive seems to be working ok, but since I never used it when the computer was working, I can't be sure. I am going to try the other Maxtor link now.

I got the exact same results using PowerMax 4.23
"Cannot load DOS! any key to retry"

Download this and burn it to a CDR - it has all those utilities on it, plus many other useful apps. It is a bootable CD, so you don't need to bother with a floppy.

Ultimate Boot CD