:cry: i have left my pc on for a few days downloading everything was fine, i go to work this morning and my gf tells me she was using it and it "suddenly shut down" asked her if it was hot she said it was, (the case and the inside)
She told me she tried to to restart and all she got was a blank desktop with no icons.

my question is:
have i killed it by letting it over heat?

or

has my girlfriend done something to it? (she hates my pc and would be happy to see it go)

or

is she lying just to upset me ?(she would as she is evil like that, but somehow i still love her)

or

am i worrying about nothing?

or

is it something worse?!!

i havent had a chance to check it myself but any advice from someone who has done something similar would help as if it is bust then the only way to discuss the symptoms with you peeps is to wait till tomorrow when i get to work.

i will fill you in tomorrow anyway but at least this gets the ball rolling.
my specs are in my sig

thanks in advance.

If you say to someone who thinks they've broken something "Was it hot" the first thing they'll say is yes, when actually they don't know because they don't know what the normal temperature is.

Does it get into Safe Mode?

The fact that it gets on to the desktop suggests it isn't 'terminally dead'

Something's wrong. But it's a case of finding out what.

good point as you stated the fact it turns on and gets to the desk top is a positive point to keep in mind.

i will take a look when i get back home and fill you in with more details.

thanks

ok checked out my computer and when i booted it up i got the following message

"this application has failed to start because Normaliz.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem"

now i was in the process of installing internet explorer 7 when i was told it shut down by itself.
obviously its a software problem as i have a second drive with windows installed which i tried and it started no problem.

has anyone any ideas as to what it is or do i need to reinstall windows again?

many thanks

Well, you could download normaliz.dll and see if replacing it works. You might also need iertutil.dll.

This seems to be quite a common problem when installing IE7.

Can you get into Safe Mode?

i havent tried safe mode but think it shouldn't be a problem

quick question where would i find the Normaliz.dll file? should i just try to google for it?

i'll try safe mode tonight and have a look if not i will just have to reinstall windows luckly i back up all my personal data on a seperate usb harddrive and i have a spare drive with windows and some of my other programs preinstalled and then all i tend to do if i have a problem is a simple copy using imagequest it will be a case of reinstalling some additional programs but then its just a bit of a pain.

i try some of your suggestions and let you know

ok checked the web and realised that its to do with IE7 what a surprise seems a lot of people have try downloading and installing internet explorer 7 only to have files removed i will try to rectify getting windows back on track but i will one day get hold of bill gates and hurt him a lot for the hassle he's given me.

now why didnt i stay with firefox?!!!!!!!

one day i will learn

There's nothing wrong with IE.

This is the price you pay for downloading beta software and not reading the part which warns you it could crash your system

The same thing happened when SP2 was in pre-release. Loads of people insisted on installing it before anyone else and it messed up their systems no end.

Internet Explorer 7 is actually out of beta. If your computer restarted midway through an install, I would go into Add/Remove programs and do a Repair on the installation of IE7.

yea it did reboot during the install and it wasnt the beta version.
managed to do as you said Dani and reinstall via safe mode so everythings is back to normal thanks guys for the help