Unfortunately my sudden refusal to shutdown, seems to be quite regular. I click "Turn Off From the Start Menu" We get to the windows is now (closing)shutting down screen, the jingle plays...and we are not on nor off. Its Microsoft limbo hell. Mouse control has shut down. Can I delete .Net Framework 2.2 without hell to pay? My gut feeling is my problems are stemming from .net or the Merc board. The Merc board once shut down my Morrowind game and cancelled the tilde key assignment. Even Bethesda Softworks said there was nothing I could do. Ideazon support told me to upgrade my all keyboard drivers to hid, and that (unknowingly) knocked out the PS2 keyboard drivers used by the laser mouse assignments...it wasn't until I redownloaded the laser mouse drivers, did everything start to work. I can now cheat on my game to my hearts' content. (The tilde key brings up a game console where dirty little cheaters, like me, can enter codes to cheat.) This driver install and uninstall freeze with this crappy keyboard, that I'm stuck with to save money, is going to break me. It might have caused some problems. I had to reboot my computer from the default settings in bios. Although there was a warning on the Microsoft update site about one of .net updates rendering some computers unresponsive? Well! gee. I CANNOT DO A SYSTEM RESTORE! I tried a few different restore points...and honest to Pete!...I got this message saying the system hadn't changed so they weren't going to bother, there wasn't any point!? I mean, I never!!! What the????

Hi Zep, Here's the information from the Whocrashed report. System Information (local) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- computer name: LYNNDELL windows version: Windows XP Service Pack 3, 5.1, build: 2600 windows dir: C:\WINDOWS Hardware: Inspiron 530, Dell Inc., 0FM586 CPU: GenuineIntel Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz Intel586, level: 6 4 logical processors, active mask: 15 RAM: 2950799360 total VM: 2147352576, free: 2022486016 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crash Dump Analysis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crash dump directory: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump Crash dumps are enabled on your computer. On Tue 6/10/2014 9:46:41 PM GMT your computer crashed crash dump file: C:\WINDOWS\Minidump\Mini061014-01.dmp This was probably caused by the following module: win32k.sys (win32k+0x5FC9E) Bugcheck code: 0x1000008E (0xFFFFFFFFC0000005, 0xFFFFFFFFBF85FC9E, 0xFFFFFFFFADB9BAE4, 0x0) Error: KERNEL_MODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED_M file path: C:\WINDOWS\system32\win32k.sys product: Microsoft® Windows® Operating System company: Microsoft Corporation description: Multi-User Win32 Driver Bug check description: This indicates that a kernel-mode program generated an exception which the error handler did not catch. This appears to be a typical software driver bug and is not likely to be caused by a hardware problem. The crash took place in a standard Microsoft module. Your system configuration may be incorrect. Possibly this problem is caused by another driver on your system that cannot be identified at this time. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conclusion -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- One crash dump has been found and analyzed. No offending third party drivers have been found. Connsider using WhoCrashed Professional which offers more detailed analysis using symbol resolution. Also configuring your system to produce a full memory dump may help you. Read the topic general suggestions for troubleshooting system crashes for more information. Note that it's not always possible to state with certainty whether a reported driver is actually responsible for crashing your system or that the root cause is in another module. Nonetheless it's suggested you look for updates for the products that these drivers belong to and regularly visit Windows update or enable automatic updates for Windows. In case a piece of malfunctioning hardware is causing trouble, a search with Google on the bug check errors together with the model name and brand of your computer may help you investigate this further. ------------------------------------------------------------ I'll try reinstalling Firefox, but I'm doubtful because during the course of today - after my initial Firefox difficulties, I did update from Firefox 29 to Firefox 29.0.1. So I can re-install 29.0.1, but installing it this afternoon did not fix the problem. I'll check back later. And now I'll reinstall. Thank you. Lynn.

Well if the Dimension computer has a separate video card - as opposed to onboard - and if both computer have the same video slot (AGP or PCIe) you could move the card from the dimension to the Inspiron to see how it looks before spending money perhaps. Newegg, linked below, show 12 video cards in the $10 to $25 range and 159 in the $25 to $50 range. Frys are another good place to look. Here is a link that might be useful: Newegg video cards

Snidely - good point about not removing things if they're not causing trouble - lest they turn out to have been needed. So I have left some things that I have no idea about. I did delete Dell Stage - bc. it's a real pain - gets in the way all the time (my daughter who's had this on her laptop for 2 years confirmed that it's just in the way). I did all the microsoft updates, ran a few antivirus, got rid of what I want to get rid of, and it's mostly good to go. Here's the trouble that remains: I can't get the printer working. It's a Canon Pixma MX850 - on the home network. I did not want to install the Canon disk bc. it has a ton of it's own bloatware. So I went to Canon and downloaded the driver - as well as the IJ utility software (I think that helps the computer find a printer on the network). Went to devices and printers, added the printer and made it the default printer. It shows up in printers and devices, but when I go to print something, it fails. Troubleshooting says the test page didn't print bc. something else is in the queue. But there is nothing else in the queue. I opened the queue from my pain desktop (that's connected to the printer) - and there's no documents in the queue. Went to the printer queue on DH's lapto; - it also shows nothing in the queue. I can print from other computers. Don't know what else to do. And I just remembered that I did not see Java. It didnt come up as needing updating when I ran the Secunia scan. I am not sure which programs need it, but can imagine my husband being stumped if he tries to do something that needs Java and asks him to install. I'd like to install it for him. Got to remember that. I also have a question about Microsoft Security Essentials. Twice now it found something bad - and I selected to remove the couple of files. Does this AV just run in the background or do I also need to run scans? Thank you. Lynn.