Seeking Help for a Computer Problem (Vanity)

AC's Cranky Dell | 11/22/03 | Self

[Alberta's Child]

I may have to upgrade my system to Windows 2000 for some new software I'm trying to run. Will that fix the problem?

[John Lenin]

Open up my computer, highlight and right click on the c drive and than click on tools and scandisk should be there. If not shut down Win98 to a command prompt and type scandisk c: and hit enter. This will tell you if your FAT table is messed up, if it is you will have to reformat the drive, no ifs, ands or buts about it.

[John Lenin]

Uninstall any new software that you put on since the problem started.

[Alberta's Child]

I just ran ScanDisk, and it showed no problems at all.

What exactly does re-formatting the hard drive involve?

I can save just about everything I need on zip disks, and re-install any other software afterward.

[LADYAK]

Ok here is what I have been having problems with on my XP-Using Internet Explorer..just recently I have been getting a pop up that my whole screen will go white on me...then all of a sudden in the middle of the screen appears an enter button saying click here....once clicked it does tell me that my anti-virus system has failed and that I live in Alaska. (I use pcillin) It even replaced itself on my home page...this is the site that appeared on my home page (http://ad1zendmediacom/ad-spy) I have't had the problem for a few days as I have been going to file tool/internet options deleting cookies/ deleting internet files...even searched my computer to see if it was stuck somewhere...when this occurs I can only shut the computer down and reboot control/alt/delete will bring my bars back on the screen the besides the start button everything is inoperable...even though you can tell that my internet site are functioning behind this popup...any other suggestions where this puppy might be?

[Fire_on_High]

Heat can cause weird crashes too. Make sure you're getting good airflow from your power supply fan, then if it's good, check your cpu fan. This is best done with the case cover removed so you can look in. If it's spinning good, put your hand carefully in front of it for a few seconds, if you can feel a lot of heat (not airflow, but heat radiating from it) off of it you might want a better one. If there is very little airflow, or the fan is moving sluggishly or not at all, turn that machine OFF immediately and get it replaced! I've seen waaaaaay too many gremlins last through reinstalls, virus scans, and the like, only to be banished for good on replacement of a dying or dead cpu fan. If either of those are the cause, you can do the work yourself and save a bundle. A power supply (if that's the cause) is about $35, and maybe a 15 minute job to replace, less if it was assembled with any attention to where the power leads were ran. A cpu fan replacement is about $15 on average, for a good one, and takes about 10-15 minutes.

Not necessarily saying either of those are the cause, but if nothing seems to be wrong with the OS itself, and the problem persists after a reinstall, it could be worth looking into. In any case, checking your fans occasionally is good practice. Heat kills cpus faster than just about anything else, and can cause an amazing variety of problems at "sub-lethal" levels.

[Revel]

"It looks like I have another problem. When I try to download an executable file, it automatically tries to open in QuickTime
media player. How can I fix that?"

Depends on the browswer you are using as to where the file extension actions are listed. In Netscape you can hold down the shift key when you click on a link and the save diaolog will automatically pop up. You might be able to right click on a link in expoler and get a menu option to do that.

[AUH2OY2K]

Get Netscape

[John Lenin]

Reformatting the hard drive involves wiping out the FAT table which directs the system to your file locations. After you do a backup of your files get a win98 startup disk (floppy) and startup the system with it, when it gets to the dos prompt type: format c: Restart the system with the w98 startup disk again, it has to load your CDROM drivers so you can install w98 from the cd, at the dos prompt type the drive letter of your cdrom like this. d: hit enter than type setup and win98 should start the setup program. You have to have smartdrv.exe running or it will take forever to copy the files from the cd. Good luck.

[Alberta's Child]

It looks like I've fixed the DW error by disabling some of the items in the startup process.

The Explorer error continues to be a problem, though. I don't know what I'm going to do about this.

Will upgrading Windows 98 to Windows 2000 fix this problem?

[John Lenin]

Will upgrading Windows 98 to Windows 2000 fix this problem?

Just reinstalling windows will fix the problem but Win2000 is a lot more stable than win98, as long as you don't use old programs you should have no problems with win2000.

[Alberta's Child]

What precautions do I need to take to reinstall Windows 98, in the meantime? Is it as simple as re-installing it directly from the CD that came with the computer?

[Psycho_Bunny]

I only mentioned it because I just cleaned around 40 computers of the blaster worm and variants....mostly Nachi....and none of them did what's being described in the original post.  Pretty much all they actually did was flood Port 80....the 2000's and XP's anyway.  The 98's just spread the worm.

It's possible you encountered a variant I didn't come across....the McAfee Stinger.exe identifies 44 different blaster-type worms.

[JoJo Gunn]

The exact same thing happened to a friend of mine's '98 machine. Uninstalled QuickTime and that cured all ills. After a couple of weeks we reinstalled it and it worked okay, downloads were okay, so....

Sometimes just uninstalling and reinstalling a program does the trick. I assume you're using Office 2000? I'd uninstall it, scandisk and defrag, wait maybe a day or two to see if the problem persists (if you can do without it that long) and if all seems well install it again. Yeah, it can be a pain if you'd tweaked the user settings over time, but fighting the problem and losing data can be worse.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Sorry about your puter troubles, AC. I get troubles from time to time as well.

Hope you're able to fix them.

[Alberta's Child]

UPDATE

Today brings some good news and some (sort of) bad news.

The good news is that my computer has been "stable" for the most part all day today -- the ongoing "EXPLORER" error from the last couple of days has come up only once.

The bad news is that it had the same problem last night when I shut it off, so I have no idea which of the numerous "fixes" I tried was the one that actually worked. I tried about a half-dozen different things, so if anyone here has a similar problem I could describe most of them for you.

The other bad news is that one of the possible solutions I came across involved downloading some updated elements of Windows 98 from Microsoft's technical support website. This may have helped, but one of the things it did was give me an updated version of my web browser -- and as a result, my we browser has been acting very odd. The speed seems to be OK most of the time (i.e., pages usually load quickly even with a lot of graphics), but after a web page is downloaded the system freezes for about 30 to 60 seconds before I have any access to it. If anyone has come across this problem before, please let me know how you addressed it!

I can't have everything perfect, I guess. LOL.

[Victoria Delsoul]

There is another solution to your problem, AC and that's the window, LOL!!!

Seriously, hope you solve your problems soon.