Don't know if this hardware or something else.

I am totally confused. I just a computer which was used in a call center, and was checked out by someone first (I hope).
VERY strange problem right off the bat. Running on MS Vista, it keeps giving me error message about not being able to connect to my ISP site to check email, and kept hollering about not being able to get on Internet, but yet here I am on here now.

Any ideas at all would be great.

 

Very vague information. Have you contacted your ISP? What do you use for email- an online service like gmail or "my name at yahoo dot com", or are you using (or trying to use) Outlook or Outlook Express? Are you on a hi-speed connection (DSL/broadband) or dial-up or something else like ClearWire?
More info would be helpful.

 

I assume you meant to say you just bought a computer second hand from a call center?

If so, it sounds like there are left over settings on the computer from the call center. When you connect it to the internet, it is likely trying to perform tasks that it was set up to do in the call center. You should try to find out which programs are trying to connect to other things and remove the settings, or if possible, reformat the drive or restore it to its factory state.

If you post some more information about the computer (who makes it, what model) we might be able to help you with this.

 

Now it is connecting to the Internet but acting so strangely almost like I am using dial up for some things, but then like cable, which it is, for other things. Now just a long list of things which I may have to tackle one at a time. Suddenly switching to Vista is slowing me down too.

 

I worked on a friends PC last week and got the same indications. They use Dial up from People PC and I had it at my house connected to my Network. The whole time it was connected but wanting to dial up. Check the connections via the control panel and see what you have for default and disable what you don't need.

If you have the disks it would be worth the time to give it a clean load. Who knows what else is on that machine. You could save yourself disk space and speed up the machine.

 

I agree 100%. I find it very odd that this call center would sell their used PCs with the software still installed. The college in my town frequently has sales where they sell all their outdated computers, but the hard drives have either been removed or formatted.

Keep in mind that Vista requires MUCH more power just run than XP does. Even Vista Home Basic is a hog. I'd recommend at least 1gb of memory, and 2.4ghz minimum CPU. If you have an older hard drive, it may be only 5400rpm. A 7200rpm drive is a necessity, especially with the resource hungry Vista.

 

This PC may also have connected to the net through a Proxy or domain which you no longer have at your house so check your settings. It may be a good idea to run through the network setup wizard again to reset it and look through the internet options like in connections > lan settings for anything to do with proxies or connection settings you should no longer need. You should only have "automatically detect settings" enabled unless you use a proxie or connect thru a domain.

 

Another update. Thanks all for advice. I have contacted my ISP, who is their usual level of help - which means not too helpful, with a few wonderful exceptions. English is a tough language though and if you have someone who is only reading from a script with no tech background it is tough.
I am ready to reinstall OS I think. Now I have a new, strange, but nice surprise. Once this system is in good shape I am going to sell it, only because Best Buy called me and accepted a hard offer I made them which I thought was turned down. Usually haggling in a store does me no good, but they are running out of space. Which brings me to the point of asking about Win Vista being a power hog. My new computer, coming this weekend is a 2.2GHZ Duo Core with 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM. My machine I just got the other day has 1 gig single core 2.8 CPU. I hope the new one is fairly up to speed. Now am diving in head first in the world of VISTA and will hope/pray it goes well. Couldn't find a machine to haggle over which had XP on it. I do want to use Vista though so will hopefully learn it quickly enough.