Archive through October 21, 2003
TV ClubHouse: Archive: Computer Problem - I need advice/help (ARCHIVES):
Archive through October 21, 2003
Juju2bigdog | Wednesday, October 08, 2003 - 01:48 pm     Not the only gamers, Yankee, just wrong thread. I bet if you did a search, you would find old threads for gamers. I vaguely recall seeing some, but since they were not of interest to me, I didn't read them. |
Texannie | Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 06:58 am     Dra, have you heard of Spyware Blaster? It runs in the back kind of like Zone Alarm does. |
Draheid | Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 09:06 am     Texannie: I had not previously heard about this so I did a very brief search and definitely like what I see. On a site I frequent called webattack.com I notice the company that produces Spyware Blaster, Javacool, also has several other '-Blaster' products that look very useful. Click here for a list of those too. When I have some time, I may try downloading some of those and try them out. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile, if you're using this already, what's your experience with it? |
Texannie | Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 12:40 pm     Adaware was making me crazy, and after many emails with the MySearch people, I really feel like they aren't putting spyware on. (the files that were coming up were mysearch registry files). So far, this seems to be ok. When I ran it, nothing from MySearch came up, but other stuff did. I will look at your site. |
Whoami | Thursday, October 09, 2003 - 01:02 pm     Well, I had about an hour to help KTBB (my sister) with her computer yesterday before we left for our family gig. I'll try to break down all that's happening; maybe someone can recognize a symptom here. When we first logged on to IE, the browser wouldn't even load up all the way. I could still see fragments of her desktop up in the toolbar area. So, I did disk cleanup. Cleaned out cookies and Temporary Internet files. Ran Stinger, came back clean. She downloaded Netscape (after 3 or 4 tries) the night before. Netscape is running fairly well so far. So, figured maybe we can re-install IE. Went to Add/Remove programs. But, prior experience tells me the only thing that will do is either repair the program, or just move it to the previous installment of IE. I go to Add/Remove with the intention of trying to "repair." Instead of the regular Internet Explorer, I see "Internet Explorer" followed by the letter K, and some numbers. We "remove program" on it. But it's still showing that IE in on the computer. Log back on, and it's running pretty good. So, we uninstall a spyware program she'd found. It lets her download for free, and then scan. She said it did find files, but you had to register and pay a fee to clean out those files. We uninstall that one, with the intentions of downloading AdAware. I also download the patch provided by Dra in his post above to KTBB. I notice the file name is something along the lines of K, with some numbers. Hmmmm....was that the IE Kxxx that I saw in Add/Remove programs? (when I got home, I checked my own Add/Remove list, and see mine says Internet Explorer Q828750). I'm wondering what the letter/number combo means. So, Sis comes back into the room, and I have her take over the computer and browse around to see if she sees an improvement (she's on Earthlink dialup. I'm on Eartlink DSL, so after getting used to mine, hers at her best looks slow to me). It's working pretty good, until her Earthlink connection is suddenly disconnected. She still has her IE browser up, and hits re-connect. Then all heck breaks loose. The IE window won't close. We keep hitting the X at the top, and get nothing. The toolbar at the bottom (with start menu, etc) won't come up. Ctl-alt-del is completely unresponsive. Finally get the window to close. The appearance is that there are hundreds of windows overlaying each other. But it could be that it's just the one window with the image superimposed over and over (we're able to grab the window and move it around a bit). The desktop is completely gone. But we do finally get to the taskbar. Finally just re-boot. Try to re-connect. On her 56k modem, she is lucky to get 26 on her dial-up connection. IE still unresponsive, but we do get it to close. Netscape still works ok. We had to leave for our gig. So, that's the way we had to leave it. Any ideas? Her computer is about a year old. 80gig HD, 512mb RAM, 2.1gig processor. So, it's not like that thing can't handle the programs running! |
Texannie | Friday, October 10, 2003 - 09:08 am     I think I am becoming just a tad bit obsessive about this! LOL more spyware questions....... downloaded Spyblaster and Spyguard..they are supposed to run in the background and block spyware from even coming on like a firewall. Well, got curios and downloaded adaware again and got all the mysearch stuff plus a couple of little ones. Uninstalled and installed SpyBot and it acknowledged MySearch as possible spyware. I really like the MySearch bar for my kids cause it does good searches and we just don't seem to hit the porn sites by accident. What should I do???? |
Kealoha | Sunday, October 12, 2003 - 10:51 pm     A quick question, any help is appreciated... About a week ago something weird started happening when I launch IE. It says "detecting proxy settings" in the bottom bar, and takes 3-4 minutes to load my homepage. It never did that before and it's annoying the heck out of me. After it does load, I have no further problem with it and I'm hoping that it's just a setting or something. I ran scandisk, defrag and did a virus scan. Didn't help. My computer is Win98 with cable modem. Thank you in advance.  |
Draheid | Monday, October 13, 2003 - 05:53 am     Kealoha: In Internet Explorer, click on 'Tools - Internet Options' then click on the 'Connection' tab. There you will find a button for 'LAN Settings' near the bottom. Click on 'LAN Settings' and be sure 'Use proxy server...' is unchecked then click 'Ok'. Hope that helps. |
Kealoha | Monday, October 13, 2003 - 12:06 pm     Draheid, thanks for your quick reply. I checked the LAN settings like you said and the "use proxy server" is already unchecked. Any other thoughts?  |
Draheid | Monday, October 13, 2003 - 02:01 pm     Kealoha: Are all the options on the 'LAN Settings' box unchecked? I should have said that before, none of the boxes on there should be checked. I can't think of any other settings that would display information on the IE page though. If it continues, would you post here exactly what you see as you see it, when this happens again. |
Zachsmom | Monday, October 13, 2003 - 06:11 pm     Kealoha, Mine does that at times too. My cable guy said it's just my computer trying to reach their computer and there could be heavy network traffic or some problem with their network. |
Kealoha | Monday, October 13, 2003 - 10:22 pm     Draheid, in LAN settings under "automatic configuration" at the top - "Automatically detect settings" is checked. Should I uncheck that? It only happens when I first turn on my computer. Everything goes normal and I get my desktop. Then I click on the IE icon and it looks like it is starting to load, partial bars at the top, nothing on the page itself and the "detecting proxy settings" in the bottom left corner next to the "e".(I don't know what that area is called, the very bottom one is the Taskbar right? It's right above that.) Hi Zachsmom! We meet again, lol. I was thinking that it might have to do with the cable connection also but it doesn't happen on the other two computers that are hooked up to the same cable modem. When it happens to you does it take a long time? I actually timed it once and it was just under 4 min. The other computers fire right up.  |
Draheid | Monday, October 13, 2003 - 10:25 pm     Kealoha: Yes, uncheck everything on that panel. That should stop IE from searching for a proxy server setting that doesn't exist. Hope that helps. |
Kealoha | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 12:59 am     Dra, I unchecked it and hopefully when I turn it back on in the morning it will work correctly. I will let you know. Thank you again for your time!  |
Whoami | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 02:32 am     <looks around sheepishly> ummm....I don't want to be annoying here, but....shall I assume that KTBB's and my problem are unfixable here, and we should look elsewhere? Maybe my post was too long and boring. I do tend to be long winded when I try to get detailed. But, then again, I am a Brown (as is poor sis). Maybe her problem is just too Browny.  |
Lostintheglades | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 05:34 am     Whoami - right click on the desktop and go to the properties settings...under the web tab, uncheck the Active Desktop...this might help. |
Draheid | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 05:42 am     Whoami: I apologize for not responding sooner, here are a few ideas for you. First, the Q828750 refers to the Microsoft Knowledgebase article which discusses the patch/upgrade installed. Click here to see that this one refers to an Internet Explorer Oct 2003 cummulative patch. A suggestion to help keep you from getting frustrated on her dialup connection, download all the programs and software you may need for KTBB's computer, using your DSL connection, then burn them to a CD to install from on her computer. You should gather any large patch files from Microsoft, the latest Netscape, AdAware 6, and anything else you can think of (Winzip if she doesn't have it, etc.). My theory at this point is that KTBB has some spyware or adware on the computer that is causing lots of problems. I've not seen Internet Explorer K in an Add/Remove session before so I'm going to guess that's part of the problem too. Hope this helps. |
Jagger | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 10:59 am     Sounds like I may be having similier problems to what Kealoha is having. Mine was doing the same thing when I first turned it on. Now when I turn on my computer and try to get onto the internet it keeps telling me it can't get a network connection. I have Comcast High Speed connection. It has been doing this since Saturday, when I called Comcast they said they were not receiving a signal from me, they said that my modem isn't working which is preventing me from accessing the internet, unfortunitly I bought my modem instead of renting it from them, so they'll come out and fix it or replace it but it will cost me 50 bucks plus the modem. |
Kealoha | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 04:26 pm     Dra, just wanted to let you know that my fiancé informed me that when he fired up the computer this morning everything went fine. No "detecting" Thanks again for your help!  |
Whoami | Tuesday, October 14, 2003 - 04:43 pm     Thanks for the advice Dra! I'll pass the info along to sis. In fact, she's probably dog-sitting for me this weekend. Maybe I'll have her burn the CD herself on this computer!  |
Sia | Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 12:38 pm     Please, what is "Fishhook Installer" in regard to aol's AIM instant messenger program? I cannot find any documentation on it. Thank you. |
Draheid | Thursday, October 16, 2003 - 01:36 pm     Sia: I wasn't able to find anything on it either - even on the tech boards I use occasionally - nothing comes up with that name. Sorry. |
Sia | Monday, October 20, 2003 - 10:06 pm     Thanks, Draheid, for trying. Next question: how do I access the "forgotten password wizard" in Windows XP? I registered a free download some months ago from www.mycorkboard.com and love the program, but because one of my kids ended up messing up my layout I locked the items/backboard in place by password-protecting the option that allows me to change my background. Long story short, I can't remember my silly password. How do I change this without deleting and re-installing the entire program? Thanks in advance. |
Draheid | Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 05:48 am     Sia: To my knowledge, there is no 'Forgotten Password Wizard" in any version of Windows. Even if such a utility existed, it would not affect the password of a 3rd party program (what you downloaded). I would suggest you look at the site where you downloaded the software and explore their FAQs or contact their tech support for help in recovering the password. Sorry I couldn't help with this. |
Mak1 | Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 10:43 am     I think this is an easy question, but I always like to be sure before deleting anything. After running a defrag and scandisk recently, a slew of files appeared with the extension .CHK. I looked this up and read that .CHK files are file fragments saved by scandisk and defrag. They're taking up a lot of space! Is it safe to delete them? |
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