First I am sorry for the different posts just trying to put them in the proper place for consideration. I have a dell demension 2350 pent 4 1.8 ghz processor 1024 mb ram 30 gig hard drive and 80 gig slave drive. A few months ago the computer crashed or at least I think it did wouldnt boot after the dell logo just got a black screen....tried to boot from safe mode or any other mode I COULD....no dice so I took it to circut city and they pluged it in and said yep you gotta re format I dont know how to do that so they did it for me. of course when I got it home it was bare of every thing took me days to figure out every thing and probably didnt do some thing right cause I have had problems ever since. so now I keep getting the IE error: the instruction at 0x01633812 refferenced memory at 0x016f4918 the memory could not be read click ok to term then I GET a runtime error 216 at 01633812. then there is the problem with windows not starting takes forever and then I get the error sorry didnt write that one down and am not willing to SHUT off to get it I may never get windows to start again . So any hope? help? etc will be greatly appriciated, an sorry again for the posts.I would start with removing the RAM and reseating the chip(s). It's pretty straightforward. Do you know how to do this?

Afterward I would download and run memtest for a few hours. (Free at www.memtest86.com)

This seems like a memory error, so I would start here.

What problems caused the reformat in the first place?

If you post your service TAG (on the outside of the case) it would help with some of the work we need to do later for the other problems.

You said you had a shiny Windows CD to reinstall with? What version is it?

ok it first started with not being able to download macafe updates then the thing would not boot up couldnt boot from disk or anything just dell logo on start up then black screen. I have macafe and adaware spybot ccleaner and secrete maker running on the computer run them often defrag often as well. I have the windows xp home that came with the computer and yes I do know how to put in the ram so I will try reseating that. my service tag is 51vqg21 thanks for the help. I am not a complete dummy when it comes to these things but close....I know just ENOUGH to make me dangerous Here is some more info you might enjoy after further research:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=259279

http://www.smartcomputing.com/techsupport/detail.aspx?guid=&ErrorID=21707

Is your McAffee up to date? If so, I would turn off system restore, boot to safe mode (F8 at startup before the Windows logo) and run it there.

I would try the free online virus scanner at www.trendmicro.com also.

After the system is clean you can turn system restore back on.

Thanks for all your help but I have one more question if I reseat the memory and try to start windows and it wont start then what?? thanksYou're no worse off than you are now and you will need to reload Windows.

Did you try ALL of the above suggestions?