Argghh computer crashing need some help.

[British_Rover]

Man I just wrote this long post and as I went to post it my computer crashed. So I am going to add to this a little bit at a time and finish it when I get to work.

Expect to see lots of edits here. I will put the screen shots up first.







Any idea what that little box that I circled is? It only shows up on firefox and only started showing after these repeated multiple crashes. It appears to the right and slightly below my mouse pointer when I leave it stationary for a couple of seconds.

The other error showed up when I tried to reinstall zone alarm.

[MadCow809]

See if you can uninstall ZoneAlarm completely from safe mode. Sounds like zonealarm is giving you the problem.

Or alternatively, try go into c:\documents and settins\owner\local setteings\temporary internet files\ and manually delete that zlsetup_70_473_000en[1].exe file

Sounds like a program error to me, I don't think it's your IE or Firefox thats having the problem, especially seeing as you have reinstalled both browsers.

[British_Rover]

Originally Posted by MadCow809

See if you can uninstall ZoneAlarm completely from safe mode. Sounds like zonealarm is giving you the problem.

Or alternatively, try go into c:\documents and settins\owner\local setteings\temporary internet files\ and manually delete that zlsetup_70_473_000en[1].exe file

Sounds like a program error to me, I don't think it's your IE or Firefox thats having the problem, especially seeing as you have reinstalled both browsers.

But would that explain the random crashing even when I don't have a browser or other internet type program open?

Last night hat computer crashed right after restarting about six times before it stabilized. I would restart the computer it would get halfway through opening my startup/task bar programs then crash and restart on its own.

One of the times right before it crashed a program in my task bar, I can only assume my spy doctor program, popped a bubble saying, "you may be a victim of software counterfeiting." That bubble only came up that one time and hasn't come back since.

Also I think I can figure out when these problems first started. I have my computer set up to do some routine maintenance like disk cleanup, defrag, etc. a couple of times a week. I check every once in a while to make sure that it is doing these tasks properly. Tuesday I checked and it wasn't doing the disk cleanup very well as I had a ton available space for cleanup. I told it do it manually and watched it finish. Do you think I deleted some temp files that I actually needed by accident?

[MadCow809]

nope

you can delete everything under temp without fucking up your pc.

do this

start menu -> run -> type in "msconfig" -> startup

see what programs you are running upon booting into windows. Make sure there are not weird malware or spywares running, cos you can usually pick them out from msconfig

Take off all the unneccesary programs, then you can narrow down the possible cause of problems.

[British_Rover]

Ok started to work on the msconfig suggestion and I got another crash and then got the software forgery thing again.

I clicked it and got this website supposedly from Microsoft.



There is no content.IE5 folder in my temp file folder for me to delete.

[cvrefugee]

PIRATE!

[MadCow809]

Originally Posted by British_Rover

Ok started to work on the msconfig suggestion and I got another crash and then got the software forgery thing again.

I clicked it and got this website supposedly from Microsoft.



There is no content.IE5 folder in my temp file folder for me to delete.

oui, whats with the genuine microsoft validation check?

you wanna consider a format and re-install?

[British_Rover]

I figured out where the microcrap check was coming from. When I reinstalled firefox I lost some particular MS plugin that is used to verify your copy of windows when doing updates. Without that plugin when I went to Microsofts site to look for possible updates it started throwing that warning randomly.

It looks like part of my firefox profile was corrupt and that was causing some of the problems. I shut down a few programs in msconfig including two programs that had blank lines for the startup and command columns and now the computer seems stable again.

[MadCow809]

Nice, msconfig is always the place you should start first.

Thats where all those evil spyware/virus/trojans show up.

While you are at it, click on services, "hide all microsoft services" and see if there are anything sketchy running in the background.

[British_Rover]

You think one of those two blank line applications are/were something nasty then?

[MadCow809]

Not sure, could be deleted/old programs, could be spyware etc..

There used to be some blank startup application/link in my msconfig setting, but I always make sure I remove those evil links.

Right now I only have 3 applications running under startup.

[British_Rover]

Ok well it is better now but I am still having random system crashes and random program crashes.

After windows recovers I get errors like this and Microsoft says it is a driver error. The problem is they don't tell me which driver and all of my driver software appears to be installed and running correctly.

[MadCow809]

That doesn't really look like a driver error problem.

But when was the last time you updated the drivers?