Problems with booting my computer– help!

vitamin_joe

I try to boot, and it fails, so then I go to ‘restore computer’ (F11) in the start-up menu, and it restores the computer to the last time it worked, which was May 26th. It takes a while to restore, then restarts and boots normally. This has happened four or five times now.

I don’t know what’s wrong, or how to fix it. I did an AVG scan yesterday, but it found nothing. I’m running windows vista on a fairly basic PC, if that helps. I’m also getting these error messages when windows finally loads-

“Problem report and solutions has stopped working”

“Device installer error– windows could not load the installer for display”*

“Could not initialize the application's security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your application's profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full.”

Any help much appreciated.


*I haven’t tried to install anything recently, so I have no idea what this is about

Browntoa

there was a recent AVG program update so initially i would uninstall that and then run

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

to remove all the junk form the pc, then click on the Registry Icon on Ccleaner (2nd one down) and then scan and fix all it finds , run it a couple of times to be sure its fixed everything

Browntoa

then download

http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

update it as it installs and then run a full scan of the Pc and post that log file when its done

also download

http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/

do a scan and post that log file as well

enigma52

Browntoa wrote: »

then download

http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

update it as it installs and then run a full scan of the Pc and post that log file when its done

also download

http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/

do a scan and post that log file as well

and what does op use as antivirus whilst doing all this downloading?

enigma52

Browntoa wrote: »

there was a recent AVG program update so initially i would uninstall that and then run

http://www.filehippo.com/download_ccleaner/

to remove all the junk form the pc, then click on the Registry Icon on Ccleaner (2nd one down) and then scan and fix all it finds , run it a couple of times to be sure its fixed everything

and what would op use as antivirus whilst doing all this downloading in this posting and also your next post?

pendulum

enigma52 wrote: »

and what would op use as antivirus whilst doing all this downloading in this posting and also your next post?

It's fine to download trusted files from trusted sources with your antivirus disabled. Be realistic, nothing bad's going to happen! We're talking about downloading CCleaner, HijackThis and MalwareBytes here.

vitamin_joe

Thanks for all your replies.

I already run CCleaner fairly regularly, so that isn't solving it.

Seem to be unable to uninstall AVG, or install the first anti-malware program. I managed to install 'Hijack_this', and it scanned, but it wouldn't make a log-file. Unsure how to proceed now :undecided

Browntoa

rename the malwarebytes install file mbam-exe to something else like vjoe.exe and try again

suspect theres a background infection blocking the install

Browntoa

if that fails to install then download this

http://www.superantispyware.com/portablescanner.html

as it produces a random file name and does not need to update before scanning

ignore AVG for now ( it would have been ok to remove it despite the above posts , I was planning to use other tools to remove any virus infections and your firewall would have remained active to protect you)

Browntoa

did you click the tab to do a system scan and produce a log file with hijackthis ??

aliEnRIK

Im assuming your using vista?

Whilst pressing the SHIFT key, RIGHT CLICK the hijack.exe file and select RUN AS. You then want to SCAN AND SAVE A LOGFILE