Possible Virus???

Electra_King

superscraper thanks for info. I am always wary of downloading security software. I agree about Norton leaving rubbish behind, it came with the pc. I purchased and installed McAfee, removing, or so I thought Norton through the uninstall programs but I was wrong. At one point McAfee would not check a particular file and would stop the scan. After much investigation I found it was a Norton file so deleted it. They certainly don't make it easy!

iviv

Did a bit more digging. A 0x0000007A bluescreen can indicate:
•The paging file contained a bad block. •If the page file is on a SCSI device, the trap could have been caused by improper termination. •Bad cabling from hard disk to controller. •An error on the disk controller. •Running out of non-paged pool resources on the server. see here.

Do you run any programs such as Daemon Tools or Alcohol, that create virtual drives? If not, there's a possibility that it could be caused by bad memory. Run memtest overnight (instructions). Start that going before you go to bed, and stop it when you wake up. Should give it time to give the memory a good going over, and find out if its causing problems.

Also, I second the recommendation for Eset security. I've been using their NOD32 antivirus, and its consistently performed at the top in tests as performed by AV compatatives. Cheaper than most alternatives, too.

Electra_King

iviv yes I have. Thanks for the link though. I already have SP2 but I noticed that there is a SP3, anyone have it?
Have you used hotfix before?

superscaper

Electra_King wrote: »

iviv yes I have. Thanks for the link though. I already have SP2 but I noticed that there is a SP3, anyone have it?
Have you used hotfix before?

All XP PCs I've had access to I've upgraded to SP3. (Probably about 5 or 6). Ironically only one that I had problems with was my own, but that was a problem when SP3 was just released, I think they've covered that specific problem in the current updates. (Only affected some AMD processor based computers). Other than that no problems.

iviv

Hotfixes are used all the time, pretty much everything you download through windows update is a hotfix. This is the same, just you're manually downloading it. Though it'll probably tell you that you already have it installed, as you already have SP2. You can upgrade to SP3 if you like, though it is basically a collection of all the hotfixes released since SP2, and not really vital for home users. Plus, some people have complained about problems with it.

Electra_King

iviv no I don't have Daemon Tools or Alcohol, never heard of them.

ref memtest looks complicated If I follow these instructions could I potentially lose files on my hard drive?

ref 0x0000007A bluescreen the only bit I understood was the bad cable, the rest is in a foreign language :rotfl:

I have check the cables from the disc drives even unplugged them and ran without but the error still happened.

iviv

The 0x0000007A basically means there's probably a problem with the hard drive, which is a Bad Thing(tm). And regarding you removing the cables, sounds like you tried the ones to the cd/floppy drives, but there's also one that goes to the hard drive, and the computer wouldn't run without that

Memtest is perfectly safe, it doesn't even tough the hard drive. It just writes a load of junk data to the memory, then checks it to see if its all correct, then does this again. Nothing is saved on the memory, and when you turn off the computer the memory is essentially wiped clean anyway, so there's no chance of data loss.

However, the hard drive is still the main suspect, so my advice on backing up important files is still sound, and should be done. About.com has listed 4 ways to scan your hard drive for errors. We've already done method 1, so skip that. Since we don't know what brand hard drive you have (And I'm not on my laptop, so I can't poke around to see if windows tells you anywhere) we'll stick with programs that will run on all hard drives. Seatools for windows will work.

Please note that if the problem is with the hard drive, than these programs could make it worse, depending on what the problem is. If there is no problem, than any data will be safe.

For ease, here is the download page and instructions on how to use it.