The most frequent problem we (who regularly answer on this web site) have is the person who started the topic has NOT supplied enough information !!

Have you set the Time and Date in the bios Setup to their current settings, Saved bios settings ?

If NO, DO THAT !

If YES ….

If setting the Time and Date in the bios didn’t fix your problem….

Do you have more than one physical hard drive installed on this computer ?

Has more than one Windows installation been installed on this computer ?

If the answer to those questions is NO, and NO, then…..

You may have changed some setting you shouldn’t have changed in the bios.
Go into the bios and load Bios defaults, Save bios settings.

If that doesn’t help regarding your problem, if you’re sure the ram and all cards in slots are all the way down in their slots, then there’s probably something minor that’s a problem in Windows that you need to fix.

You need to – boot the computer from a Windows CD, or the equivalent Recovery CD that came with your computer, in order to fix your problem.

( -or – if you have access to another working computer that has Windows XP or 2000 installed on it, you could remove the hard drive that Windows was installed on, and connect your hard drive one way or another to the other computer, do NOT boot that computer from your hard drive, and run CHKDSK /R on the partition Windows was installed on (see below) , on your hard drive.)

Most Dell computers that originally had XP Home or Pro on them that I’ve worked on came with a Recovery disk, Dell labelling, “XP Home (or Pro) SPx Re-installation CD” or similar.
That disk can be used the same way as a regular Windows CD.

(If your computer has a MCE 200x version on it, it didn’t come with that.)

If you don’t have that, or you might have that but can’t find that, the first thing I’m suggesting you try is to run CHKDSK from a Windows CD you boot the computer from, and for that you can use any XP CD that is not an Upgrade CD
If you don’t have one, you may be able to borrow one from someone you know that has a computer that has XP on it.

Boot from the XP CD, load the Recovery Console, run CHKDSK /R C:

For more info,
see response 11 in this:
https://computing.net/answers/wi…

starting at, scroll down to “If that won’t work…..”

…..

If running CHKDSK /R doesn’t fix your problem…..

Check your hard drive with the manufacturer’s diagnostics.
See the latter part of response 1 in this:
http://www.computing.net/windows95/…

If you don’t have a floppy drive, you can get a CD image diagnostic utility from most hard drive manufacturer’s web sites, but obviously you would need to make a burned CD, preferably a CD-R for best compatibility, on another computer if you need to.

E.g.
Seagate’s Seatools will test (almost) any brand of hard drive.
Do the long test.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j…

The bootable Dos versions of SeaTools can be used even if Windows is not working properly.
If the hard drive itself tests okay, any data problems found can be fixed, one way or another.
….

If the hard drive itself tests as okay…..

if your computer has XP Home or Pro on it,……

– in order to probably fix your problem WITHOUT you losing your personal data

– the Recovery disk, Dell labelling, “XP Home (or Pro) SPx Re-installation CD” or similar.
– or – a regular MIcrosoft OEM CD for the same version of XP as is on the official Microsoft label on the outside of you case, Home or Pro. That has “for distribution with a new PC only.” printed on the CD, and the Microsoft holograms.

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Generally, 512MB is said to be the limit for Win95/98…the limit is actually 2GB. But before you can install that much, you have to edit the vcache setting in the system.ini file.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/181594

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q25…

Another thing to consider is the amount of RAM that’s cached by the motherboard chipset. For example, the i430TX chipset that you mentioned only caches 64MB. If more than 64MB is installed, Windows will automatically go to the uncached RAM 1st & that *may* reduce performance. Cached RAM is ALWAYS faster than reading directly off the RAM stick so it’s generally adviseable to stay within the cache limit. The exception to that is if you know you will regularly run software that requires more than 64MB. In that case, exceeding the cache limit & having Windows read directly off the RAM is preferrable to staying within the 64MB limit & having Windows use the much slower virtual memory on the HDD to make up the difference.

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Change the access-key/password – and change any vowels to say accepted other characters. Use a zero for a letter O; use an exclamation mark for number 1 – and so on?

Hide the router’s SSID (the name it broadcasts to the world) – but make sure “you” know what it is… as you will need to manually enter it in order to connect an y time there is need to do so (as in reconnect). Alternatively change it – but best is to hide it whatever it is.

Even better besides the above…

Use mac filtering – a list you create which restricts access to only those mac addresses in that list. This is done within the security settings for your router’s wifi setup.

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