TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

Original post: http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic21425.html

I thought I removed the adware just fine using your help. Then my computer started to randomly restart. At first like once a day, but then upwards of 3 or 4 times a day. I think, but am not positive, that it was hard drive read errors.

Then one time it restarted and windows booted to the blue screen of death (I couldn't access actual windows in regular or safe mode) giving a C0000218 error message saying it couldn't load the hive file. I looked this up online and basically my only recourse I could find that worked was to reinstall XP. I reformatted my HD and installed XP. No more blue screen of death on startup but my computer still randomly restarts.

I was trying to get the system updates for XP and had problems with that. It downloaded the files, but then when it went to install from the location where it had downloaded the files to it gave an error message saying it couldn't find the files.

Now to make things even more annoying/worse whenever I right click while using internet explorer, IE crashes and I get a window to send error report to microsoft.

Do you think the adware somehow caused this? Do I need to replace my hard drive? Any help/insight would be very much appreciated. You guys are great.

Thanks a lot,
Tad

Tad,

May want to run the hard drive manufacturers program for hard drive diagnostics. They will give you the best result for what to do with your drive.

I would try to start using mozilla firefox. It will cut out the spyware and after running adaware, you will find almost no pieces running ever.

If your drive turns up good, you may want to start with memory.

know you know what the old saying " the cure is worse than the disease" means. you will probably need to do a clean install ( format and reinstall) of XP to solve your problem.

the fact that you can trash your registry with hijack this is why the authors of the program warn people who are not knowledgeable not to use it.

It is YOUR PC and you can do with it as you like.
Your online pokerstuff was of the moneymaking-racket type.
I rest my case.

Random restarts are caused buy a lot of things. 1) faulty or failing power supply 2) memory problem 3)worse case a bad motherboard /cpu Most of the time it is a very easy fix just to replace the power supply or get it tested you can buy a power supply tester at a computer store or they can test it for you for a price.


This is the frist thing I would look at. Then when you reinstall your os I suggest to zero out the drive then fromatt then install the os this is the long way but you will have basically a new harddrive. Go to the makers of your harddrive web site there is a utility there you can do this with.

No disrespect, but what are you talking about? I've been playing poker for almost 2 years and I have never had any sort of problem with the software save for them 'hijacking' IE and adding one of their buttons to my toolbar which was not a big deal to me.

As for it being a 'moneymaking-racket' I feel you think I'm doing something shady or illegal. Well thats about as old fashioned an opinion of poker as I've encountered since I started playing for a living. I've played hundreds of hours on multiple computers and this is the first time I've had serious problems on any of the computers.

So if anyone else wants to take a pot-shot at how I make a living go right ahead I've heard it all before, but if you do at least try to post something kinda helpful with it too

Thanks,
Tad

Make sure that your CPU temp is OK. THat's a really common one for crashes and the like. Reboot, go into your BIOS and check out the PC health monitor.

You could always do a system restore to see if that helps.

I'd still say it's very possibly the CPU temp. If the heatsink inside of your machine becomes too clogged with dust then the system will start to flip out, and can reboot. (The BIOS on newer systems auto shuts the computer down when the proc reaches a certian temp)

Like mentioned above faulty RAM or power supply can be the cause of it as well. If you do suspect the HD is the issue you can usually download diagnostics from the manufacturers website and run them. They usually just make a bootdisk, you boot from it, and then run the program.




Internet Explorer does not load / crashes
http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/Intern...erNotLoad.html

How to read your hijackthis log
http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/ReadHijackThisLog.html

and just in case some spyware has screwed with your DNS (You'll see a 'Hijacked internet access by new.net' entry in hijackthis)
How to repair your DNS tables
http://www.tweaksforgeeks.com/RepairDNS.html

Just to set things straight, I did not judge your chosen profession ( I am an avid watcher of all the big pokergames (Texas hold'em) on TV), nor did I implicate that you were doing anything illegal or shady. Just advised to get rid of all that online-poker software, which is highly unhealthy for any PC. My choice of words could have been better, I admit, I probably should have said, that it was of the computer-wrecking type.
If those programs DID do anything bad to your PC, it would only be software-caused, although there are some real "ballcrunchers" out there.

A fresh install (on a newly formatted drive) would certainly get rid of such evil-doers, so the real cause must me some failing hardware.
If the HD is the 'baddie' as per the manufacturer's test-tools, then an excellent harddisk reviver is available from http://www.dposoft.net/ in the shape of HDD-Regenerator. This "rewrites" and refreshes the whole HD non-destructively, taking care of any bad parts that HD might have.
Memory can be tested with Memtest86 from www.memtest86.org (or .com).

Hope I did not step on anyone's toes too hard.

I appreciate your responses. I'm currently sick as a dog so I'll wait until my head is clear to try using some of the utilities you gave. I should have made it clear earlier that my sole reason for wanting to get my computer fixed was so that I could play poker on it. Hence hearing that I should delete the poker software was of no help :-P

Thanks a lot for the replies,
Tad

The problem with online gambling sites and the like are that they do have a tendancy to lean toward the more 'scummy' advertising. Even sites that were once clean can easily change to dirty in the pursuit of a dollar.

If you do continue using the sites, then I'd suggest getting all of the Windows updates, as well as you may consider switching to FireFox to do your browsing (there aren't any hijackers for it yet that I know of)