Dad's computer Causes BSOD's after reading email

[sw123]

Hi everyone.

My dad has an old computer from the 90's, and it has run pretty well. Except when It started having BSOD's. First it had crashed and made BSOD's every time we turned it on. But we got it fixed, and now we have a new problem:

It now gives BSOD's after reading certain e-mails, titled: John Mauldin's weekly e-letter, which is a buisness and political e mail. I cannot give you the total system specs, but I can give you some like:

O/S: Windows 98
RAM: 128 MB
Processor: Intel Pentium III 400 MHz.

he reads his email through AOL 9.0

And the BSOD says:

------System is dangerously low on resources------

A fatal exception OE has occured at O167:BFF9DBA7.
The current application will be terminated.

Press any key to terminate the application.

Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your computer. You will lose any unsaved info in all applications.



So my dad presses a key, and he gets a new error message:

Msgsrv32

Msgsrv32 has caused a general protection fault in module KRNL386.exe at 0001:0000ac95.

-------
|Close|
-------

Then he gets stuck and has to restart his computer. If you need a HiJackThis log, I will provide it. Thanks in advance, I appreciate it.

sw123

 

[kirock]

Well 128M of RAM is pretty low, so if he get's any spyware at all I can see how he could get the message:"--System is dangerously low on resources--"

Maybe those emails have some spyware crap attached to them. Does he have Spybot S&D and Ad-Aware? Do a scan with Spybot and run the immunize service as well.

 

[sw123]

He has no spyware, firewall, or virus scanner of any kind. I can't install a new one because the harddrive is crammed with all kinds of spayware I bet. I tried installing AVG, but I had no luck(registry problem, obviously virus or spyware). So should I get you a HiJackThis log? I bet its got tons of crap. Thanks for the reply!

 

[howard_hopkinso]

It sounds to me like you need to backup your dads important data and reformat and reinstall from scratch.

Make sure you have firewall software at the ready. Disconnect from the net and don`t reconnect untill the firewall is installed.

Regards Howard

 

[xXGoDXx]

It sounds to me like you need to backup your dads important data and reformat and reinstall from scratch.

Make sure you have firewall software at the ready. Disconnect from the net and don`t reconnect untill the firewall is installed.

regards Howard

it may have some spyware in it. I run ad-aware everynight. my computer is great also go out and buy Trend Micro antivirus program its really easy to use. but yea just reinstall and u should be good just dont have that pc connected to the internet untill u have a antivirus prog,firewall.then install Ad-aware once your done with that and run the scans with both TM and Ad

 

[sw123]

It's impossible to run a virus scan on my dad's computer. When I tried installing Norton Antivirus 2005 on my dad's computer, guess what happened then? B-S-O-D. I dont know why, but it does anyway. It's basically busted. I think my dad will go with howard's option. Is it possible that it's not spyware? Perhaps the motherboard is going dead. It could also mean bad HDD. I might as well build my dad a new PC and put his other data on it. Thanks for all your help guys!

 

[kirock]

Well BSODs are caused by many hardware issues and incompatible drivers. In your Dad's case my best guess is that XP on 128Mb of RAM is cutting it so close as soon as you load any large program you're going to get an address error 0X0000002E or 0x00000050 I'll bet.

You might try looking around at a local PC shop for an older PC with compatible ram to get at least 256 in there. But like you say it might just be easier to build him a new one.


Cheers.

 

[sw123]

He doesn't run XP. He runs Win 98. And everything is OEM, so I doubt drivers are bad. The BSOD's after installing Antivirus programs are caused by spyware I bet. Maybe the spyware can be removed with HJT. I will post an HJT log on the next post.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

He doesn't run XP. He runs Win 98. And everything is OEM, so I doubt drivers are bad. The BSOD's after installing Antivirus programs are caused by spyware I bet. Maybe the spyware can be removed with HJT. I will post an HJT log on the next post.

The trouble with posting a HJT log is, your dad doesn`t have room on his hard drive for any antivirus/firewall or presumably antispyware tools, which would be required to clean the system. Am I correct in this assumption?

However, if you still want to post a HJT log, then feel free.

Regards Howard

 

[sw123]

He has the room, almost a gigabyte, but I still believe that we should remove the spyware with HJT.

 

[howard_hopkinso]

He has the room, almost a gigabyte, but I still believe that we should remove the spyware with HJT.

Ok, Post a HJT log into this thread as an attachment. I`ll take a look and advise.

Regards Howard

 

[sw123]

Well here is the log. Thanks for replies everyone!

 

[howard_hopkinso]

You might want to copy and paste these instructions into a notepad file. Then you can have the file open in safe mode, so you can follow the instructions easier.

Boot into safe mode, under your normal user name(NOT THE ADMINISTRATOR ACCOUNT). See how here.> http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/tutorial61.html

Go to add remove programmes and uninstall anything to do with(if there).

AVEO\ATTUNE

Close control panel.

Open your task manager, by holding down the ctrl and alt keys and pressing the delete key.

Click on the processes tab and end process for(if there).

Attune_di.exe
Attune_st.exe
Attune_cu.exe

Close task manager.

Run HJT with no other programmes open(except notepad). Click the scan button. Have HJT fix the following, by placing a tick in the little box next to(if there).

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AttuneDiscovery] C:\PROGRA~1\AVEO\ATTUNE\Bin\Attune_di.exe

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AttuneSysTray] C:\PROGRA~1\AVEO\ATTUNE\Bin\Attune_st.exe

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AttuneContentUpdater] C:\PROGRA~1\AVEO\ATTUNE\Bin\Attune_cu.exe

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [QuickTime Task] "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\QTTASK.EXE" -atboottime

O8 - Extra context menu item: &AOL Toolbar search - res://C:\PROGRAM FILES\AOL TOOLBAR\TOOLBAR.DLL/SEARCH.HTML

O16 - DPF: {A7E84D65-E121-4855-8EF0-C96195925F82} (Retriever Class) - http://www.adsvr.net/PowerStrip/PSI.cab

Click on the fix checked button.

Close HJT.

Locate and delete the following bold files and/or directories(if there).

C:\PROGRA~1\AVEO

Reboot into normal mode.

Post a fresh HJT log.

Regards Howard