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General discussion

Dell Inspiron 6400

Apr 12, 2013 10:27PM PDT

I have a Dell Laptop Inspiron 6400. I bought it in 2007 and it may be a refurbished one. Recently it has slowed down a LOT. I have defragged and cleaned the hard drive and this only helped a little. It is a 120 Gb HD and it is only half full. Do you think I should replace it? It is used daily; I do not do serious gaming, but my Popcap games (which I do play a lot!) will suddenly close and I have to click in the menu bar to get them back, always in the middle of a round of play. I use Internet, MS Word/Excel, play games, and that is about all. Opinions, please! I am looking at replacing with touch screen, but this is our second computer (replaced desktop with large laptop last year, but this is the one we would travel with).

Discussion is locked

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Forgot to mention
Apr 12, 2013 10:28PM PDT

I am running XP, and since we got the new HP laptop, I can't get this one to print to the network any more! It's a pain to have to email my docs to the other computer if I want to print!

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For sharing w/XP & Win 7 I use Network Magic
Apr 12, 2013 10:49PM PDT

Getting Windows 7 & XP to share things is a challenge. That's why I use the free version of Network Magic from Cisco to set up my networking.

Good luck.

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I'd boot to Safe Mode and check for viruses
Apr 12, 2013 10:47PM PDT

It sounds like you could have a virus or other malware. Get your antivirus program up to date and boot into Safe Mode. Note that some viruses can hide themselves from your antivirus program in normal mode, so you really need to scan in Safe Mode. To get into Safe Mode when you first power up, hit F8 about once a second until you get the menu and select Safe Mode. Then run a full system scan.
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Good luck.