My computer has not been working well after I got technical support for my scanning and printing device.  The technician took over my computer over the internet and manually deleted the program for my scanner/printer/fax before trying to reinstall it.  I am not sure about everything he did but it looked like he went into my hard drive and deleted files one by one.  When he could not delete something I think he went into the task manager (accessed by Control-Alt-Delete) and deleted something so he could delete the file of the program.  This did not work and I had to get someone else to fix things.

?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /> 

The following is the problem I am now having.  After starting my computer from either hibernate mode or from shutdown there are periods when everything seems to freeze.  This occasionally happens when it has running for a while.  I try to open a window and nothing happens.  When I click on another box for a previously opened window to the right of the start box nothing happens either.  Then about 30 seconds later the commands I previously gave (such as opening the previously opened window) take place.  This was a problem yesterday when I needed to access something quickly and it seemed like everything froze up.  I was not running a program or doing anything complicated.  In addition some things that worked before are not working now.  When I click on the button to change the volume the volume does change but a bar does no longer appears on the screen to show the volume level.  I do not see a level bar when changing the screen brightness either.  My screen saver option was also changed – I had to click on my user name to get back to where I was after the screen saver started instead of it just showing where I was before.  Also, every time when I go to shut down I am told I need to install windows updates and every time it is 6 updates so I suspect that something is not working right there either.  I tried to do a system restore to a previous time but got an error message that something was missing.  I also see something strange when I go to the windows task manager box.  Under user name I have my name listed for applications as well as SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, and NETWORK SERVICE.  For example for svchost.exe I see 5 image names with 5 user names which are LOCAL SERVICE, NETWORK SERVICE, SYSTEM, NETWORK SERVICE, SYSTEM.  I ran a scan for viruses with McAfee virus scan provided by msn premium from Verizon and it found nothing.

What can I do to fix this problem?  Can I put the windows XP disk that came with my computer and run some type of repair program?  I cannot afford to lose the work or information on my computer and I need it to run right and efficiently.

Inspiron 9300
Windows XP (Media Center Edition)
Pentium M 1.73 GHZ, 2MEGB, 533 FSB
Memory: 512 MB
DVD +/- RW, 8X IDE, NEC Corp
Graphics: 128 MB
Hard Drive: 80 GB
17” Wide Ultra Extended Graphics Display