Hello Old friends - Want some free advice from eggheads

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » June 2, 2005, 11:22 am

hello my old Veeshanites. My PC is hosed and you guys have been the best tech support in the past, may as well try again.

I had my PC built with EQ II in mind back in 2003, before I knew that SOE was teh debil. It came in Dec 2003 and was pretty salty at the time, still good enough for WoW (ATI 9800 XT card, 420 watt power supply, etc etc).

Well, since my wife has been fucking submerged with baby pictures, the whole OS is screwey, yes, I blame my wife.

I get an error when I click on the 'My Computer' icon, and anything linked directly to the System on the C drive (Control Panel, etc). I can navigate by going through the run menu and have been doing so.

Icannot extract any zipped items either, it looks to C and craps out. This has been like this for months, but guess what? I can still play poker and WoW without issue, so my mess with it. Well, looks like I'm now a big boy level 60 and I need these add ons.

So what should I do?

I'm going to basically reload my OS (XP) and hope that take care of some of the issues. Short of that, anybody ever heard of this?

Thanks for any input and the free tech support. I know, I know, you get what you pay for.

Fash · Post by **Fash** » June 2, 2005, 11:30 am

answered your own question seebs... reload!

pm me if ya want an ISO of windows xp pro with service pack 2 integrated..

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » June 2, 2005, 12:23 pm

I have no idea what you just asked me to get from you, but if its porn Fash, yeah, I'll take some of that.

*~*stragi*~* · Post by ***~*stragi*~*** » June 2, 2005, 2:31 pm

you have a varient of the SASSER virus
acutally i don't remember what it's called but it was an opporunity to type SASSER in all caps
SASSER! try it, it feels great!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » June 2, 2005, 2:46 pm

Grab Microsoft's free Antispyware app here:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/securit ... fault.mspx

Run the deep analysis one time and then the quick checks should suffice after that.

Make sure you have Windows XP SP2 installed and are up to date on security updates.

Doing the above steps is like giving your computer an enema. It will clean it out and make it feel fresh and perky.

Tenuvil · Post by **Tenuvil** » June 2, 2005, 2:49 pm

One of my friends has this same issue. I assumed it was a virus but I didn't know which one...good to know that Sasser causes this behaviour. My plan was to install fresh XP Pro onto a whole new drive, then cherry pick the data off of the old drive.

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » June 2, 2005, 3:24 pm

Thank you all.

Winnow, I'll get the barium ready and take some stills for you to post.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » June 2, 2005, 3:39 pm

in addition to MS Antispyware, you need Spybot and AdAware.

the last 2 can be obtained at download.com they are in the "Most popular downloads list" midway down the page.

All 3 catch a different subset of shit.

The MS offering is pretty good though. Have it running first. Spybot uninstalled something on a coworkers machine, and the MS Spyprotection thing caught it trying to reinstall itself.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » June 2, 2005, 4:07 pm

Anyone else have a problem with the MS Antispyware application consuming all available CPU when you leave the agent running?

I noticed very sluggish system behaivior and turned out MS Antispyware had 97% of my system resources. My system had been on several days, so I took advantage of that time to reboot and it grabbed it all again. I eventually turned the agent off using the Exit command. It turned itself back on. I uninstalled it and reinstalled it, but it showed the same behavior. Now I only run it to scan, but leave the agent off.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » June 2, 2005, 4:38 pm

so you are saying the MS antispyware is worse than spyware?

hehe actually i may have noticed this this weekend. sounds a lot like what i was experiencing.

miir · Post by **miir** » June 2, 2005, 4:55 pm

I havent had any problems with it.

It's still beta so I'd imagine there is still some bugs that need to be ironed out. Nevertheless, it's a pretty solid app.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » June 2, 2005, 5:24 pm

Voronwë wrote:so you are saying the MS antispyware is worse than spyware?

hehe actually i may have noticed this this weekend. sounds a lot like what i was experiencing.

Oops, I should have also mentioned that I don't leave MS Spyware running. It slows my computer down. What I do is run it once a week or so and then shut it down...especially the active agent stuff. I noticed right away that downloading multiple files (like images) off newsgroups bogged everything down as the MS Spyware active agent tried to scan them.

So what I meant to say was run the deep analysis once then exit the app...just remember to run it once in awhile to clean out stuff your wife may have downloaded off the House and Garden sites.

The XP updates constantly provide new versions of their "malicious code" remover app which autmatically runs.

One thing you have to be sure never to do is click on any pop up windows. ..you know...the ones that ask you "would you like to make this your home page" even clicking "no" will still screw you. cntl-alt-del to get your task manager up and close out of your browser without clicking anything.

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » June 2, 2005, 5:32 pm

I found something called AdWizard in my control Panel. It will not allow me to remove it and when I try, It takes me to a site to downlowd an item to uninstall. Um, shit, no, unt uh.

I'll let you all know how it went tomorrow.

If you don;t hear from me .. assume I do not have access and it went poorly.

Morgrym · Post by **Morgrym** » June 2, 2005, 9:16 pm

Do a search for a free registery cleaner. There are a few out there from time to time. Run it several times if it is one of those that picks up tons of errors but only cleans 2 or 4. You may be shocked and amazed at how much your registery can be hosed.

I am sure some of the techies here know of a sweet cleaner for you to use.

Drasta · Post by **Drasta** » June 3, 2005, 12:49 am

use Adware Away ... best one i have found ... it got rid of About:Blank for me!

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » June 3, 2005, 2:11 am

Utterly Amazing.

More than 500 adware/spyware items on my PC.

Ran RegistryFix and MSAnti-Spyware and it cleaned my PC great .. but still errored when I clicked the 'My Computer' Icon.

Downloaded Ad Aware, went through all the commands and Holy shit, it wiped more torjans I had, got rid of About Blank and allows me to get back to my C Drive.

Great program.

Soreali · Post by **Soreali** » June 3, 2005, 2:21 am

Fash wrote:answered your own question seebs... reload!

pm me if ya want an ISO of windows xp pro with service pack 2 integrated..

That offer good for anyone or just Seebs because of the great mansex he gives you?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » June 3, 2005, 2:26 am

Seebs wrote:Utterly Amazing.

More than 500 adware/spyware items on my PC.

Ran RegistryFix and MSAnti-Spyware and it cleaned my PC great .. but still errored when I clicked the 'My Computer' Icon.

Downloaded Ad Aware, went through all the commands and Holy shit, it wiped more torjans I had, got rid of About Blank and allows me to get back to my C Drive.

Great program.

Exactly where is your wife going on the net???

That's all you need to do. Run a few spyware ridding apps once in awhile or when it seems like your computer is slowing down. If you haven't in awhile, you might want to run disk defragmentor Start--->Accessories===>~ System Tools. Analyze your HD to see if it needs defragging.

Ashur · Post by **Ashur** » June 3, 2005, 2:59 am

Found out Roadrunner gives the whole Computer Associate antivirus/spam/spyware/firewall suite away free to subscibers.

Installed it.

Ogbar · Post by **Ogbar** » June 3, 2005, 10:20 am

You gotta watch where you surf, Seebs: places like goldengriddle.com are full of spyware.

Seebs · Post by **Seebs** » June 3, 2005, 12:52 pm

Orgish.com
chickswithdicks.com
Grokster downloads
puppyfetish.com
mommalikesthemeatwheel.com

All sites I no longer visit.

Still a regular on NAMBLA.org however.

Voronwë · Post by **Voronwë** » June 3, 2005, 2:28 pm

LOL what is a meat wheel

miir · Post by **miir** » June 3, 2005, 2:34 pm

Wheel of Meat?

Bubba Grizz · Post by **Bubba Grizz** » June 3, 2005, 7:57 pm

Downloading the MS beta and it said it won't download unless you have a valid copy of XP. Now my question is, will it install on an invalid copy of xp if it were downloaded and burned to disk?

The only thing it picked up on my work computer was VNC. I like the ignore option.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » June 3, 2005, 10:00 pm

Bubba Grizz wrote:Downloading the MS beta and it said it won't download unless you have a valid copy of XP. Now my question is, will it install on an invalid copy of xp if it were downloaded and burned to disk?

The only thing it picked up on my work computer was VNC. I like the ignore option.

you just need to generate a new product key and they change your key. Pretty easy to do.

Unzip these two files into their own directory and run the Changer executable and follow the directions exactly.

If you don't have XP Pro Corp edition it won't work. In that case, you might want to talk to Fash about that ISO. This will also allow you to upgrade to SP2 if you haven't...i think you need to change the key to be able to upgrade to SP2 so if you have SP2 already, i'm not sure if this will work.

Nothing to see here ~50kb