Hi Folks,

Back with a bigger issue for my other machine.

The last couple of times I've booted the Dell Dimension 4700 about 2005 vintage I've heard a high pitched "whine" and I had a black screen with white letters which said, "select 'F2' or 'F12'". When I clicked on "F2" the whine disappeared as it took me to Setup. I exited from there and it continued to boot and all appeared normal.

This machine has the original XP and RAM has been expanded to 2 GB. Yesterday, I attempted a Malwarebytes scan. It ran over 40,000 files in less than 2 minute, and then took over 2 hours to get up over the 50,000 files level. I accidentally laid some papers on the space bar with a bit too much weight and it aborted the scan. But, nothing had been found.

This morning, the HP Laser printer would not function. So, I shut it down and rebooted. The print job completed.

However, when I attempted to open a browser window by clicking on a desk-top icon, all the icons went to blinking.

I ran an anti-virus scan via Zone Alarm which came up clear - nothing found.

I could not do anything via FireFox. When I click on an icon, they all start flickering.

I tried Safari browser and it works fine. I uninstalled FireFox 3.6 and re-downloaded it. However, at this point, I can not install it. When I click on the add program button in the Control Panel, the icons begin to flicker again.

After uninstalling FF, I shut the machine down and upon rebooting, had the whining noise and the F2 & F12 options. Again, I selected the F2 to get rid of the noise, exited F2 and resumed booting. Still. I cannot reinstall FF.

I'm currently using my 2000 machine which has Win 2K Pro as the operating system.

I'm open to any and all suggestions short of scraping the beast and getting a new one. Unfortunately, there are budgetary restraints right now.

Many thanks,

Tom