It may have been a coincidence but after receiving the AC adapter cannot be determined error I now cannot load any applications. However my battery still charges fine which makes me think it's got nothing to do with the AC adapter error.

Anyway, when I boot up my Dell Inspiron 6400 it boots as normal but doesn't load any apps. MSN messenger usually loads on start up but doesn't anymore. Some shortcut menus freeze when trying to load them, I cannot load My Comp - just shows the little torch. Can't right click on anything, and most importantly I cannot copy all my data to disk as it tries to load the Sonic application to copy the data to disc.

I've tried defragging - didn't work. Ran virus scan in windows and safe mode - returned no viruses. When I try to do a system restore from any date, it looks to restore but after the reboot it just loads my back drop, no taskbar, no desktop icons etc and doesn't do anything. To shut down it takes 9-10 mins before I hear the windows logoff jingle then shuts down. The harddrive light only flashes when I try to load something but then stops and doesn't load what I clicked on.

I'm at a loss and would appreciate any help!!! Thanks.

Assuming XP

Start - Run - (type) sfc /scannow (with the space) (enter)

sfc = System File Checker and restores your original files to their correct configuration

It may ask you to insert your original XP CD

Thank you for your response.

Turns out it was a OS virus. I usually use AVG to scan my PC - which couldn't find anything, but also have Avast installed. So I ran Avast but it kept stopping mid way through the memory test on file C:\Program Files\protect service\protectservice.exe. Nothing would happen after this, the memory test would stop and it didn't advise me that it found a virus.

I booted the laptop into Safe mode as the administrator and ran Avast and again it stopped at protectservice.exe but this time a pop up warned me it was a virus and advised I do a boot scan of the pc, which I did and it worked after that.

So I'm guessing the reason why it kept stopping at protectservice.exe in Windows was because it was trying to load the application to warn me it's a virus and as the virus was preventing me from loading applications I was stuck in a cycle. Thank you for your help anyway

Congratulations - I use AVG, CCleaner, Spybot and Comodo firewall (even though I'm behind firewalled router)

Mind you having said that I got hit a couple of weeks ago and had to use the resources at PCFH to get clean