I killed my computer.......It's curled up in a little ball, dead

[Katymac]

This is DH's & it's old & sad

The windows XP screen just keeps cycling - & a system restore won't

No - I only keep a few weeks

Bugger I am a pratt

search & .dbx is coming up with nothing relevant

I hate computers sometimes

I think .dbx files are Outlook Express, look for .pst files, which I think are what Outlook uses. I'm not an expert on MS software, so .pst may just be the emails, but I thought it was everything.

Reinstalling Windows won't do any good if it's a hardware problem. Download Ultimate Boot CD, pick the most suitable disk diagnostic tool for your disk and run a long S.M.A.R.T. self test on the hard disk. If that is OK then run memtest86+ to check out the memory. The longer you can leave it running the better, but at least 24 hours to have a reasonable confidence of picking up any problems.

Well I ended up phoning Dell & paying for them to say they can't find anything wrong with it....so they can't fix it

But it's working - everything is backed up so I don't know whether to try what you suggest or not

I did some diagnostics earlier today when I was tootling round....but goodness knows what they were

Running the diagnostics can't do any harm.

An error that I have had for months has disappeared - so it hasn't been a bad thing