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Archive through December 17, 2003

The TVClubHouse: Archives: 2004 January - Arpil: Computer Problems? Ask here... (ARCHIVES): Archive through December 17, 2003 users admin

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Juju2bigdog

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 9:45 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Hahahahaha, and now it fixed itself. I read and post on another message board that has banners, and I sometimes click on banners to support the site. I clicked on one yesterday, and that must have resized my windows. I just now clicked on the same one, and it resized them back. LOL.

Juju2bigdog

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 10:50 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Computer is doing all kinds of screwy things tonight. Right now I have shut down Juno and IE and am running a virus scan. I am typing this on Notepad and intending to paste it into a post later. I have not been able to post in the past hour or type an e-mail. They typing freezes up. Earlier in the evening, it would freeze and then unfreeze itself. Now, I can't post/type at all while connected to the internet. When I try to type or move the cursor around, I hear a clicking noise in the hard drive. One click for each letter typed or for each link I roll over.

Let's see, what else is it doing? Just before I quit the internet and IE, it kept giving me a low resources warning. It said I didn't have enough resources to accomplish whatever it was I wanted to do. Ack. And I can't remember now what that was. Maybe go to e-mail, something simple, nothing complicated. I have plenty of resources, 376 RAM and 60 plus Gigabytes hard drive free.

Let's see, what else? when I was trying to type in my username for New Messages on the TVCH site, it kept popping up the dialog box to Organize Favorites.

Just screwy stuff. It sort of sounds like a virus, but I have an up to date Symantec anti-virus on here. The virus scan has been running for over two hours and is at 36%. That seems pretty slow, but I usually run it when I am asleep, so I don't really know.

I'm just not sure I can blame all of this on the ham radio neighbor.

Anybody got any ideas besides a virus if none is detected?

I'm going to try to go back on the internet and post this message. If you see it tonight, I was successful.

Oh yeah, something else. It wouldn't let me open pictures I had received in e-mail while I was connected to the internet. Just wouldn't open them.

Looks like I am going to be able to paste this in successfully.

Draheid

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 11:02 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Adware/Spyware comes to mind, Juju. Something is loading in memory and using up your resources. Once the virus scan is finished, double check your running programs by calling up a task list (ctrl-alt-del} and see what looks suspicious. Something must be in there.

Unfortunately, anything prior to Win/XP (and even XP to some extent) relies on system resources which are a fixed portion of memory and can be used up while you still have plenty of RAM in the computer. I even had something I was working on recently that caused a low resource warning on my machine with 512MB RAM & 140 Gigs (80GB free) disk space on my computer with XP.

The 'clicking' sound is probably the mouse/keyboard buffer is full and telling you by making that noise - this is also a portion of the 'resources' area so it makes sense at least to me.

If you want, type up a list of what you find in the task list and I'll be happy to research it and tell you what could be there that shouldn't be.

Hope that helps.

PS: I agree, it's not your HAM neighbor in this case.

Juju2bigdog

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 11:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Heh, thanks, Dra. If it ever quits running the virus scan. It is going murderously slow. It seemed like it was stuck on 36% for a half hour, and now it has been on 37% for at least fifteen. Is that one of the perks of having a huge hard drive?

I did run Adaware before the virus scan. It found 36 suspect files, all of which looked to be ordinary cookies.

It just froze up again while I was typing this. Then it cleared itself.

I looks like it is not going to finish scanning before I go to bed if it is at 37% now and has been running three and a half hours. It is STILL on 37%.

I have a Christmas thing to attend tomorrow involving riding ferries and driving down near Seattle. So I may not be back online, except maybe briefly in the morning until mid to late afternoon. So, if you don't see me around, it is not that the computer has gone kaplooie; it's that I'm not here. I DO have three other working computers in the house. And isn't that decadent!

And I just had another freeze-up, and another and another.

And then the virus scanner quit, saying it was finished after 1 hour 58 minutes, when it was actually more like 4 hours. It went from 40% to finished in about three minutes.

And then I had out of resources when I tried to go from this screen to my desktop. This is all very screwy.

Are you SURE it isn't the neighbor? ;)

Juju2bigdog

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 11:41 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Re-started computer. As I was shutting down, got this error message: SDRE - This Program Not Responding - don't know what that is.

When I got back onto the internet, I got an error message that Ypager has caused an error in DKI.EXE. That is Yahoo Messenger, which I leave turned on.

Task Manager shows these items:

Explorer
ZoneAlarm
Onetouchmon - (my scanner)
Ypager
Pow (popup killer)
Svchost
Navapw32
Systray
Ptsnoop
Flashsk - don't know what that is

And now the hourglass has been showing the entire time I have been typing.

Just got system low on resources message again. Shut down scanner and ZoneAlarm. Hourglass is up there again. ANd froze three times while typing.

I am going to bed!

Draheid

Tuesday, December 16, 2003 - 11:47 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Flashksk - Flashksk.exe - Background task installed with the drivers for smartmedia card readers.

Ptsnoop - PtSnoop.exe - This background program is used by PCTEL modems. It is essential to the good functioning of those modems.

Navapw32 - Navapw32.exe - Norton AntiVirus Auto-Protect for Windows 32-bit. This is the Windows 95/98/ME background Auto-Protect task from Norton Anti-Virus which protects your PC as you are using it (if you have Auto-Protect turned ON).

They all look harmless - I would be very suspicious of Adware or Spyware on your machine - I don't see it in your list though - were there by any chance more programs listed below that list? You might also want to check again after you get online and start IE to see if something is loading with that.

Let me know if that helps or what else you find.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 8:26 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Just now called up the task list again. Of course it shows Juno, and the three IE windows I have open. It is now showing realevent, which I did not list last night. Not sure if I just missed listing it though. Don't know what it is, except something associated maybe with RealPlayer, which I don't use ofter? And now I have the hour glass again.

Just tried to open a .jpeg picture that came in my Juno e-mail. It would not open, and it has taken forever to get back on keel since trying to open it. Is it possible I got something wacky as a .jpeg since I got home? That's about all I open.

Wait a minute, just thought of something. Bigdog forwarded me a strange e-mail file and asked me what I made of it earlier in the week. It was like an acknowledgement of an order for a pay download, $99, had an .exe extension. I told him it was probably a virus. I forwarded it to Yahoo and looked at it there, scanned for viruses first and came up as no viruses, so I tried to open it. It did not open. I deleted it and forgot about it. It might be since then that things have been screwy. I think this is a separate problem from the not being able to navigate at night thingy though.

Okay, back to last night after my last post. I re-started. On shut-down, got the blue screen of death, which had this error message: File Name VWIN32(05) + 00001F4B Error: 0E: 0028: C02A5ED3. Cleared that and continued with shutdown and restart. The machine froze while going to open the desktop, you know, when your icons look funny just before they change to pictures. Did Ctrl-Alt-Del and got another blue screen saying system busy or unstable. Did Ctrl-Atl-Del to get out of blue screen. Could not get out of blue screen even with maching power button. Turned it off at surge protector, turned it back on, it scanned after improper shutdown, came up as normal. I started another virus scan and went to bed. No viruses detected overnight.

And it is doing the freeze-up on typing right now, but is starting again after about five seconds. As though I am out of memory? Very strange.

Any more ideas, Dra? As you can see, I got up early to see what's going on and to type this message. Will be gone for a lot of the day in an hour or so.

Thanks for any ideas you might have, Dra, or anybody else.

Draheid

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:46 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: Realevent is indeed a part of RealPlayer - their automatic notification system for events and messages regarding their services. You should be able to open RealPlayer and set the configuration to NOT load Realevent unless Realplayer is opened first. That should prevent it from loading again.

The last blue screen error you describe looks like a problem with Win/98 fast shutdown routine. While you could disable that, I have to suspect there is more going on then simply a shutdown problem.

Run MSCONFIG and take a look through the list of startup programs listed in there. Try disabling any that appear to be unnecessary and restart. If your problems clear up, turn them back on one at a time until it occurs again then see if you can remove the offending program from your computer. To do this, click 'Start - Run' then type MSCONFIG in the dialog and press [Enter]. Be sure to look under each tab as there are several places where programs start from.

Let me know what you find.

Reader234

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 11:03 am   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
OK, draheid, why cant I open my outlook express?

I get the red circle intruction at blah blah referenced memory at blah blah the required data was not pace into memory because of an I/O status of blah blah?

Is it comcast, my computer or microsoft, or dh to blame here?

Not1worry

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 12:58 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Draheid, about my pop-up problem. Here's some of the ads:

Free coupons
Internet alert
Win 1 Million$
Get a low mortgage rate
Improve your career at PCDI
gozing.com
Take a movie survey
Approval for a Mastercard
See if this lucky # is a winner
Tune up Wizard
Classmates.com
Mr. Points.com
Hit the bear and win

I don't know if that tells you anything. It's frustrating that AOL is blocking pop-ups, but they are coming from IE.

I haven't tried downloading the Spybot you recommended yet. I will try it tonight or tomorrow.

Reader234

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 1:08 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
still cant get to outlook express, I can get to my email thru comcasts main site! This happened once before and there seems to me there is windows, or operating things... dh thinks its an AIM thing, and to reboot the computer (I got locked o ut of IE!!) and wait till he gets home! *G

Mygetaway

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 4:04 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju.. I *think* you mentioned somewhere that a guy was looking after your house while you were gone, right? Is there anyway that maybe he went on your computer and messed something up and is afraid to tell you?

God luck on finding the real problem. How frustrating.

Draheid

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Reader234: I think your DH is working for Comcast which was just bought by Microsoft so you're totally out of luck I'm afraid!

....ok, you're probably not buying that - I don't think it's related to AIM in anyway since they are completely different applications. Have you recently updated or upgraded your outlook express? You may want to run a windows update throught internet explorer and check for updates to Outlook which might repair the problem for you.

Unfortunately, my vast resources have yet to define 'blah blah' in definitive terms.

Does outlook open at all but refuse to access your e-mail or is it not opening and only giving you these problems when you try to open it?

Let me know what you find out.

Draheid

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:24 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Not1worry: Try out the spybot program mentioned earlier, the ads you describe sound very much like a spyware may have latched onto your browser and is most likely the culprit displaying those to you.

If that doesn't find the problem, let me know and we'll begin the search through your startup files to see what shouldn't be there.

Hope this helps.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:25 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Funny how things somehow have a way of working out. We left the house about 8:30 this morning and did not get home again until about 5:30. I immediately went to my computer and not sure if I left it on, or this came on as soon as I dialed up the internet. ZoneAlarm shut down my computer!!! Said it was not secure or something, said I might have a virus or a trojan horse. It said if you don't have a virus scan, to go to www.housecall.com/antivirus (or something like that, I have the exact thing printed out and down in the cave where I am currently running a scan on Bigdog's play computer.

So, since Symantec/Norton was not detecting a virus, I went to that one and downloaded it, which took forever, ran it and found one virus in a temporary internet file and TWO trojans!!!

Now I need to know how to get rid of the trojans. It said they were not cleanable. It also said ones that are not cleanable should be deleted. So I tried to delete them from the housecalls screen, but it said they couldn't be deleted because they are in use.

Ack!!!

Dra, you there? I am still using the infected computer at this moment, and it is occasionally freezing up as I type this. I can get out the laptop if you can tell me what to do to clean up this one. I imagine I will have to delete those files, BUT they might be essential? So maybe copy them from the laptop onto floppy (which also has Windows ME), then delete them on this computer, and re-copy them from the floppy to this computer??? Just a guess.

At least we know what the problem is.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:28 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oh, I should add that the suspect program Bigdog sent me, he also tried to open on his computer before forwarding it to me, which is why I am now running the scan on his computer. Just checked his progress. He is up to 16,000 files scanned and no trojans or virus detected, so maybe that is not the one that infected me.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:31 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Oops, sorry, here are the descriptions and locations of the trojans:

TROJ MOSIMP.A Not Cleanable C:\WINDOWS\svchost.exe

TROJ MOSIMP.A Not Cleanable C:\WINDOWS\msto32.dll

Reader234

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:51 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
It figures, computer people never understand "blah blah"!!

I just know at one time there was something I clicked on, dropped a menu down, and then had to click a box to be able to run this version of outlook express.

Right now, dh doesnt have time with my obsession, he and his boys are at the late showing of Lord of The Rings. Nobody asked me if I wanted to go... blah, blah,blahblahblah!!

I guess I was hoping you could read my computers mind, and walk me thru which of these places is hiding a box that needs to be clicked so I can access outlook express. Dh has me going to the comcast website and using our password, so I'm not totally alone w/o mail.

I wonder about AIM, because whenever I click on outlook express up pops AIM, doesnt open when I click to open IE... and I dont like to run AIM when ds isnt around, so I close that icon, but I forget to look to see if "Ive got mail" and darn that AIM interferes and I have to wait till it jumps on board first!!

Dont worry about me, dh will be home and working on this lil problem, I'll let you know. I would call a hotline number, but I know better!! *G

Draheid

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 9:57 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: The only way I can think of to delete the trojan programs is to boot the computer in MS-DOS mode and manually delete the suspect files. Note that you may not be able to start windows again though, if you do take this step - you need to have a clean copy of the files you need to remove in order to replace them after you've deleted the infected files.

I sounds like you're running Win/98 on that computer. If so, check to see if you have the Win/98 CD-ROM to recover the files from or locate the files on another computer using the same version that isn't infected - then copy the files to a floppy and carry them to the infected computer. I recommend deleting the files before copying the clean version onto the computer.

I checked several places for the 'suspect' trojan you posted and could not find any mention of it anywhere. I'll look more but wanted to pass this along for now.

Hope this helps.

Zachsmom

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:09 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Reader, are you saying that you have no icon for outlook expreess? If you want to install Outlook express, go to your control panel, add/remove windows componets and outlook express should be there.

Zachsmom

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:13 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Reader..Perhaps try in your IE browser

Tools
Internet Options
Programs

and then see where it says email? if it doesn't say outlook express, use the drop down list and select OE.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:17 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Dra, what you suggest is, I think, what I proposed as a possible solution above when I said:

Quote:

I can get out the laptop if you can tell me what to do to clean up this one. I imagine I will have to delete those files, BUT they might be essential? So maybe copy them from the laptop onto floppy (which also has Windows ME), then delete them on this computer, and re-copy them from the floppy to this computer??? Just a guess.




Both the infected computer and my laptop, which is not infected, have Windows ME, and I do have a Windows ME CD that came with the infected computer when I bought it from a computer geek. It is an upgrade from Windows 98 version, and I don't have Windows 98 (guess the guy who sold it to me did), but it still should work as a backup, right?

Dra, are you going to be around tomorrow and have any time? Maybe we could do our old thing of me get on i.m. on the laptop with you while I do daring and dangerous things with the ailing computer? I have dental appointments from 10 to noon, so it would probably be 4-ish your time before I got to it. Or in the evening your time? IF you can do it, whenever it is convenient for you.

Draheid

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:22 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Juju: I'll be working on a couple of projects most of the day tomorrow and would welcome the distraction anytime. I usually get online around 5AM your time and sign off around 10PM your time so you should be able to catch me somewhere in between. Hope that fits your schedule somewhere.

Juju2bigdog

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 10:53 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
LOL, Dra. Okay, I will try to catch you.

Isn't it weird that Symantec did not catch the virus or the trojans? It is downloading an update right now, and I am pretty sure it downloaded one the first time I got back on the computer after being gone for two months.

Oh! By the way, just checked Bigdog's computer that I scanned with housecall. No viruses or trojans. So maybe it was not the file he sent me that infected me.

Jmm

Wednesday, December 17, 2003 - 11:00 pm   Edit Post Move Post Delete Post View Post    
Hmmmmmmmmmmm, Juju making a date with Dra. Should I be worried? LOL