Help, I have a few problems

vianna · 6 September 2004 at 12:38PM

ok, so my cousin came over on Saturday and networked my and my brother's computers so that he can get access to my broadband connection. He also upgraded my pc from win 98 to Xp pro.
Since then I have had all sorts of problems.
First my pc has slowed right the way down, is that because of the upgrade or the network?

second I keep getting pop up's they are grey windows which all contain some sort of web address and ask you to cut and paste the address into your browser, I have run my spybot scan and my drweb anti virus which have solved alot of the problems except this one, any ideas?

third, internet explorer only works once every ten times you click on it, and when it does work it is very selective over which pages it allows me to load, hence why I've had to wait til I'm in work today to post this request. I also have opera but any page I put into that says the directory is not found.

lastly, it keeps shutting down, it pops up a message that a file (all of them .exe) has closed down and my computer can no longer function so it will shut down, then it counts down from 1 min and shuts down. The problem is that it's a different file every time it comes up, I think I'm up to about 7 so far after that I gave up shut it down for half and hour then started it up and it worked fine for about 3 hours then the problem started again.

Any help with hany of these problems would be great.

Thanks

*V*

Woby_Tide · 6 September 2004 at 2:08PM

sounds like a virus for the latter problems

As for the XP upgrade, I went from ME to XP on an old PC a while ago with only 128MB installed and slowed right down. If you've only 128MB then that will probably be why, if you've more than 128MB or that was upgraded at same time, check that the correct memory amount is showing as installed

scheming_gypsy · 6 September 2004 at 11:17PM

For the grey boxes download and install google toolbar, works wonders stopping the little bleeders and also make sure you're firewalled and AV'ed up to the eyeballs

StrikeEagle · 7 September 2004 at 11:48AM

Those Grey Boxes are due to the Messenger Service.

Go Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services

In the long list find 'Messenger'. Right Click on it, and choose Properties. In the Drop Down box, change the 'Startup Type' to 'Disabled'.

Download this file called 'Hijackthis':
http://www.spychecker.com/download/download_hijackthis.html

Open Hijackthis.

Press 'Scan', Bottom left of screen.

Press 'Save Log' Bottom left of Screen.

Popup comes up, save file wherever.

Notepad opens. Go Edit (top of notepad), click Select All, Go Edit, click Copy. Close Notepad.

Close Hijackthis. Then Reply to this message, and Press CTRL + V on your keyboard when typing your reply.

Then we can see what is going on with ur PC.

StrikeEagle · 7 September 2004 at 11:51AM

Oh and that Shutdown one is due to the Blaster Virus shutting down a Remote Procedure Service.

You need:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/FixBlast.exe

Then go to:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e70a0d8b-fe98-493f-ad76-bf673a38b4cf&DisplayLang=en

And click Download (Top Right of screen). Then run the file. Should fix that problem.

vianna · 7 September 2004 at 12:12PM

thank you all, I will try those tonight and let you know, the annoying thing is my brother's pc is working fine, he was on the net last night and kept moaning at me cos my pc kept restarting I nearly hit him.

thanks again

MisterT2 · 7 September 2004 at 12:27PM

To compliment strikeeagles reply earlier....

Windows XP should run fine within 128MB. Its not till you start some heavy duty applications that you will find that you have problems; for example, MS stated that 256MB is recommended for their office suite (not sure if they still do). These are a few of my thoughts:

a) I would have personally done a complete rebuild, rather than upgrade, as its more stable. This may well account for the strange browser behaviour.
b) There is a fair chance that the PC is intrinsically fairly slow (CPU) as it was a Win 98 machine. XP is a heavier and more demanding OS.
c) One of the main factors for speed issues post XP install/upgrade is that you must defrag. I would recommend execsoft diskeeper or similar.

vianna · 7 September 2004 at 12:31PM

the problem there is I can't defrag, that problem has been since I've had win98. I took it to several different people and no one could work out why, my cousin thought maybe the upgrade would work but I left it for 4 hours and it didn't even get past the analyzing mode, thou if I just run the analyze it works no problem.
My machine could have had XP on it when I first got it but at the time XP had only been out for a short time and I didn't trust it so I got reliable old Win98 instead.

*V*

Reaper · 7 September 2004 at 2:09PM

the problem there is I can't defrag

Odd. You could try downloading a 3rd party defragger and see if that has any more luck. I use Diskeeper Lite. It's free and you can download it here

StrikeEagle · 8 September 2004 at 2:27AM

When you Defrag on Win98, if anything...and I mean ANYTHING tries to access the Hard Drive, while you are defragging...it will start all over again. So if you have a screen saver coming on every 20 minutes...it will actually cause the defrag to start again..over...and over...

Nice Huh?

XP does not do this fortunetly, so defrag should work fine.

Oh ye and it takes hardly any time to defrag in XP. 98 could quite happily defrag for hours and hours...XP generally takes under 30mins, for even large drives.

So if you cant defrag, I suggest you have a dodgy HD, which XP/98 cant read.

You might need to boot ur PC off the XP install cd and enter the Recovery Console. You will then need to execute this command: 'chkdsk /r'

That will try to find bad sectors on ur Hard-disk and recover any information it can from them.

vianna · 8 September 2004 at 1:49PM

thanks for all your help, the defrad problem is next on my list.

Last night I managed to get rid of that worm and managed to get rid of that messenger pop up. I ran addaware and it seems to start up no problem which is a relief.

Now it's still running slow which if I sort out the defrag problem that should solve that one, or at least make it less annoying.

I also still have the hit and miss problem with my internet explorer, last night it worked alright for ten minutes and then the pages weren't loading I know it's not the connection because my brother uses the same connection can access it no problem. Any suggestions on this one would be helpful.

BTW I don't have a screen saver set because it slowed my pc down even more, would the internet connection access the hard drive? because that is the only thing I can think was running at the time of my scan.

*V*

Help, I have a few problems

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