chrisknight Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 +1 on http://www.malwarebytes.org/+1 on http://www.memtest86.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReconRat Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 Who you callin floppy? What is a floppy disk? I haven't used on in a while. Last time I needed one was to install a RAID driver with Windows Home Server (Server 2k3 based) and I had to take it from another box to do that!Most all stuff has an option to burn a bootable CD now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gump Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 (edited) Turn off money hungry automatic updates....did you restore to an earlier point after all this? I had that anit-virus virus thing and had to manually remove it then download a patch to remove it then restore to an earlier point. Damn windows updates, everytime i turn it on trouble starts.Avast and Spybot is what i use with scheduled restore points saved, two folders that contain all my info for easy storage and retrieval and a complete set of the operating system cd's for a complete wipe just in case. Edited December 6, 2009 by Gump Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
$pecial_K Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 Have you installed any expansion cards recently? If your power supply isn't adequate for all of the components installed it can cause the system to hang, reboot, give you random errors, or sometimes not boot at all. If you have installed anything, try removing nonessential cards one at a time and see if the problem persists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jblosser Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 (edited) At this point, we're guessing that malware/adware is probably gone, and we're also guessing that a virus is most likely not present. We're guessing because from afar we can't see the logs, we can't see what's happening, we're relying upon your (SWing'R's) reporting of facts.You've run MBAM, CCleaner, installed a new all-in-one AV/FW, updated it, and run it. Things have been found and fixed, yet the machine is still exhibiting the same behaviors as before.So, it <may> be hardware (<may> because we're assuming bad stuff that might have been causing issues before is now gone).Rebooting randomly could be a heat-issue. The person (Jon?) who said "can of air" was right. Turn the PC off, unplug the power cord from the wall/ups/power strip, then press the power button for 5-10 seconds to discharge any capacitors that may still have a charge in them. Take the front/side/back cover(s) off, take it to the garage, and give it a good cleaning. I know you said it's not an overheating issue, but you don't know that for sure. While the case is open, check the cpu fan with your finger, make sure it spins freely. If you feel <any> resistance, the fan's bad. Install SpeedFan and check the temp. of your cpu. Anything above 60c is not good.Assuming it's not getting too warm/hot, memory (as suggested by RRat and others) would be the next place to look. I will +1 on MemTest86. Run it, see what it says. According to somewhere I looked yesterday, your machine can hold 2x1GB sticks of pc3200 RAM (double check, my memory may be faling me (pun sorta intended). New from MicroCenter is approx. $90. You can find it much cheaper at NewEgg.comIf the memory is OK, we can ask XP to not do us the favor of rebooting after a system error (i.e. Windows is screwed up) occurs. Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery/Settings, find the box toward the bottom that says "Automatically Restart", and uncheck it. Also make sure that the box that says "Write an event to the system log" is checked - now that you know about the event logs (eventvwr), it'd be nice if Windows put something in there for ya.Another possibility is that the power supply is failing. If you added an internal drive (let's say another CD burner, or a DVD burner), and/or some external drives, you might be asking more of the power supply than it's able of doing. Pre-built machines usually don't have any room for growth, peripheral-wise. The supplied power supply is spec'ed for how it came from the factory (and often is barely able to do that).Since this is a Celeron D-based machine, that means it's from somewhere between 2004 and 2006 (at least that's when Celeron Ds were made). That was around the time time that seemingly every capacitor made had issues, and you might have one (or more) failing or falied on your machine. While the covers are off (while you're cleaning it, remember?), take a look at the mobo. All of the caps should be round/cylindrical. If you see any that are bulging, well, there's the problem. You <might> be able to talk MicroCenter into a new mobo, maybe not. I know we replaced around 200 or so Dell mobos at work that had the "bad cap" problem. It got to the point where we just called Dell and they sent 'em out, no questions asked. They knew the problem, so did HP, IBM, anyone that made machines during that time period.If/once you get it back to where it doesn't misbehave, I would recommend using Acronis (like Norton Ghost) to take a complete image of the machine. If you get infected again, you'll be able to restore from your "clean" image quite quickly, without having to go through all of these steps again. I need to get some stuff done around here, but I'll post an .ISO of a bootable Acronis disk up to my website a little later today.Well, I've given you enough to do for now. Report back! Edited December 6, 2009 by jblosser "not present", not "no present".... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 Have you installed any expansion cards recently? Haven't installed any new hardware and don't have any nonesential cards I can remove.I am running the memory test Recon recommended but its looking okay, all the standard tests passed, running the extended tests now.I suppose I can do a fresh install of windows but man I hate doing that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 (edited) ...So, it <may> be hardware (<may> because we're assuming bad stuff that might have been causing issues before is now gone)...Rebooting randomly could be a heat-issue. The person (Jon?) who said "can of air" was right.... While the case is open, check the cpu fan with your finger, make sure it spins freely. If you feel <any> resistance, the fan's bad. Install SpeedFan and check the temp. of your cpu. Anything above 60c is not good...Assuming it's not getting too warm/hot, memory (as suggested by RRat and others) would be the next place to look. I will +1 on MemTest86. Run it, see what it says...If the memory is OK, we can ask XP to not do us the favor of rebooting after a system error (i.e. Windows is screwed up) occurs. Start, Control Panel, Performance and Maintenance, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery/Settings, find the box toward the bottom that says "Automatically Restart", and uncheck it. Also make sure that the box that says "Write an event to the system log" is checked - now that you know about the event logs (eventvwr), it'd be nice if Windows put something in there for ya.Another possibility is that the power supply is failing. If you added an internal drive (let's say another CD burner, or a DVD burner), and/or some external drives, you might be asking more of the power supply than it's able of doing. Pre-built machines usually don't have any room for growth, peripheral-wise. The supplied power supply is spec'ed for how it came from the factory (and often is barely able to do that)....While the covers are off (while you're cleaning it, remember?), take a look at the mobo. All of the caps should be round/cylindrical. If you see any that are bulging, well, there's the problem. - Both fans appear to be running fine (cpu and power supply).- Will run the memtest86 next, the windows one appears to be passing ok- Motherboard is clean, no sign of any malformed caps- A second cd/dvd drive and a floppy drive were added from the original config and a external usb drive is in use but it has its own power supply. So I'm running a 160g hd, a floppy, and dual DVDR drives, oh and the hd was replaced once, the original failed maybe a year or two later, thats when I added the external drive cause I lost lots of data.BTW, this ain't the end of the world, I've got my wife's pc, a work laptop and the netbook, its really just an inconvenience.If it gets much worse I can just add a profile for myself on the wife's pc until I can get mine fixed or replaced. For a few hundred bucks I can get another new powerspec from Microcenter, after the holidays, can't afford it right now. Edited December 6, 2009 by SWing'R Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 Hey, here is a copy of my latest event log, saved as a windows event log file which can be opened using your event log, when opening it chose APPLICATION as the log type.http://www.davidrosso.com/temp/eventlog.evt Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 6, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 The problem is getting progressively worse. I just finished backing all my essential things to my external drive and forwarding all my email to my gmail account temporarily. Gonna go ahead and do a format and clean install, probably tomorrow night, I'm sick and this crap is making me feel even worse, gonna go lay down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReconRat Posted December 6, 2009 Report Share Posted December 6, 2009 I fought my laptop for years, bringing it back from the dead. Finally got permanent BSOD on boot. Guessing a sector failure on hard drive that was part of op sys. After backing up with BART PE, I realized it was running very very hot also. I replaced it with yet another rebuilt laptop from work. Same model. Old. But this one runs rather cool instead. I'll check fan and cooling on the old one and re-image it for a spare. Or just parts... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Finally had some time available this evening so I proceeded with a HD wipeand fresh windows install. Well, thats what I tried to do anyway.So far (on my 4th? attempt now) I have been unsuccessfull in reloading Windows XP Home on the pc. I continue to get various BSOD errors and file copying errors. Its not looking good for this machine. I feel I may have just aquired several "spare parts" for the "next" machine.Pricing replacements now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SJC1000rr Posted December 12, 2009 Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Sounds like your HD (most likely) or Ram is dead my friend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 It LIVES! It took me since 7pm last night but I think I got it to take a fresh install.I think the problem was that even though I was selecting to format the drive during the install that it wasn' trully doin that, there was also a small (8mb) unused partition on the hd, it seems that every time I tried format/install it always told me there was an existing windows directory on the system even though after a format there should not have been!What I did that appears to have worked was used FDISK on an old MSDOS startup disk to delete all the partitions (the main and that unused one) then create a new partion and format that using FAT32 and all available space.Then I went back with the XP setup disk and selected format the drive using NTFS before install and this time the install went thru without a single error and I'm currently running the SP3 update.Yay! It lives to see another day. Persistance appears to have paid off this time, I was close to trashing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dustinsn3485 Posted December 12, 2009 Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Mine did that for a few weeks, to the point that it was practically froze up all the time, and I finally turned off the Microsoft windows update and it has worked fine since... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Okay. Just found out some more interesting information. I DID have some RAM problems afterall! Even though the memory testing showed none.Forgot to mention that during the last round of format/setups I removed my second strip of 512MB DDR400 just for shits & giggles.I've had the pc back up working great for the past hour, installed SP3, reinstalled my McAfee AV/FW, working great, no reboots, no errors.So I decided to stick the ram back in. Immediately after windows started back up it crashed and rebooted. That stick of RAM's now in the trash!So I wonder if the ram problem led to a corrupted and screwed up operating system?So for now I'll just do with a single strip of 512MB ram until I can pick up another.Thanks for everyones help and suggestions. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Flying Brick Posted December 12, 2009 Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Use Linux. Mac=BSD with an ugly purple theme...+1Ubuntu 9.10 for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ReconRat Posted December 12, 2009 Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 I scanned a dual processor RAM this week, and found no problems. But when reversing the RAM modules, it crashed immediately. With beeps... 1-3-4-3. Reversing the RAM on a single processor will move the crash from later to now or vice versa. Since it boots one RAM module first. I'm not sure of the RAM boot on a dual processor, but reversing the RAM modules seems to give clues even on those. So yes, RAM can be funky even if it passes a RAM test. Swapping the modules, or booting just one, or just swapping slot, is always worth a try to see if problems can be found. I've even found a bad RAM slot on a system board. Oh, and get the dust out of the RAM slots on the sys board. That is never good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 12, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Priced a new ram module @ microcenter, can get a PNY stick for only $20, so I'll pick one up this week and stick it in there see what happens. Just glad to have the pc working again, and with a fresh install its like getting a brand new one, yay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jporter12 Posted December 12, 2009 Report Share Posted December 12, 2009 Priced a new ram module @ microcenter' date=' can get a PNY stick for only $20, so I'll pick one up this week and stick it in there see what happens. Just glad to have the pc working again, and with a fresh install its like getting a brand new one, yay [/quote']I woudl LOVE to do a fresh install on the laptop, I just have too much stuff on it, and don't have it organized well enough at the moment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SWing'R Posted December 14, 2009 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2009 So I picked up a replacement ram strip today so now I'm back at about 1gig of ram, no sign of any problem so I went ahead a pitched that other strip that is definetely bad.BTW, don't ever consider picking up any ram @ Officemax, I stopped by there Sunday afternoon and they had the ram I needed, for $49.99I got it @ Microcenter for $19.99 (512MB DDR 400/PC-3200) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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