Until recently, it would occasionally lock up, nothing would happen, but after about 60 seconds, it would unlock and go about its business.
Now it locks and won't unlock. Everything freezes. Then I get the blue screen of death telling me about a kernel error. Then it reboots.
And EVERY time I turn it on now, I get "diskette drive 0 seek failure" and I have to hit F1 to boot, then it gives me the options to start Windows in safe mode or normally. I start it normally at that point and it seems to go fine....until the next time it freezes up, which happens, easily, four times a day just to me and at least a couple times a session to others in my household who use it.
It's Windows Vista Home Premium (it says), bought it in November 2007. Running on a Dell.
My e-z bake solution would be to get the important stuff I need off the hard drive and onto an external, then reformat and re-install the OS. Would that be a fix?
Anybody else ever see this problem before? This has never been a good computer/OS but it's gotten much worse lately.
Thanks.