merlynsdad
Programmer
I have Vista Home Premium on a 5 year old Dell Dimension E521. Over the weekend I was downloading a program to print business cards. I got an error message saying it couldn't download to Vista, but after I clicked OK it apparently kept trying, and the download shut the machine off. On reboot, it will only come up in Safe Mode (with networking), not normal mode. I've scanned it for viruses, cleaned the registry, and tried various techniques for Vista to repair itself, but the problem hasn't been solved. Last night I spent 90 minutes on the horn with with Dell Support. He scanned with another anti-virus program, and looked at some files, but his recommendation is to reinstall Vista. Problem is, I have a lot of legacy programs on this machine, some of which can't be replaced. The data is backed up, but some of the programs themselves are not because they were already installed when I got the machine. Losing the programs themselves would be a major problem.
Any ideas on a next step, or if Vista itself is corrupted, how to repair it without losing the programs? Thanks in advance for any help.
If the square peg won't fit in the round hole, sand off the corners.
Any ideas on a next step, or if Vista itself is corrupted, how to repair it without losing the programs? Thanks in advance for any help.
If the square peg won't fit in the round hole, sand off the corners.