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November 9th, 2004 19:00
Screen goes from active to inactive?
Hello All:
I bought a new DELL Dimension 4600 about a month ago and it has one really strange problem. When you are in an active screen it will go inactive all by itself. In other words, the dark blue bar at the top of the screen (active) will suddenly change to light blue (inactive). The only way to make it change back to active is to click with your mouse inside the screen to re-activate the program. This can be a real nuisance, especially when typing an email because when it happens you can no longer type until you click back in the screen with the mouse. It happens like once or twice every five minutes or so, sometimes more often than that.
Some more things regarding this problem. When the tower is left on for a long while it seems to go from active to inactive alot less. Why would this be? In other words, if I reboot, it does it more frequently, but then while the system is on longer it still does it but much less.
When I called the DELL techies, they had me run the computer in selective startup mode and this took care of the problem, but other problems arose, like my Norton antivirus didn't function correctly and I couldn't get into "secure" websites any longer, like webmail, my account, banking info sites and the like. So I switched back to normal setup and now the problem is back again. Why would selective startup fix the active-inactive thing? The answer to this question is very key as it could be where the problem lies.
Anyway, I'm desperately looking for a way to fix this and with a new PC I really shouldn't be having these problems so any advice would be greatly appreciated...
Do you think this is a software issue or a hardware issue? Should I send the tower back to DELL and have them figure it out at their place?
My system is a DELL Dimension 4600, running Windows XP, Microsoft Office Basic Edition.
The problem happens in all applications by the way, not just email...
Please help out if you can, but be advised this one is a DOOZY!!!
Thanks for your help,
Best Regards,
RW
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KWW
2 Posts
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December 5th, 2004 11:00
RickW617
33 Posts
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December 6th, 2004 18:00
Hello KWW:
After I pulled most of my hair out, I finally realized that it was my Norton antivirus that was causing the problem. If you are having this same problem, I don't even have to ask, I know you have Norton on your computer.
What you have to do is uninstall all of your Norton, and then reinstall it again. First make sure that you have the blue disk that has all your applications on it. The disk with the antivirus software on it is obviously the disk you will need. After you do a reinstall of the Norton, run a complete scan and you should be good to go. The problem should be gone. It's been about 3 weeks since I fixed mine and it's been fine ever since.
If for some reason this doesn't work for you, you might have to try another antivirus software like McAfee or something else.
This seems to be a problem with the DELL 4600's. DELL needs to fix this problem before they send out NEW PC's to people....
Anyway, give it a shot and please let me know your results...
Regards,
RW
PS - Be advised that when you reinstall the Norton, any live updates that you've done will be lost. You will have to re-run live update to reupdate the Norton software...