OT: I kind of need help

[Starhawk]

Hey all I recently have started having MAJOR problems with my comp by which I mean my comp has gone ape sh!$

Okay here's the problem all of my games start playing fine then suddenly boot back to windows as if someone pressed the window's button with games lke Rome Total war when I try to reload the game the whole dang thing crashes back to desktop.

Also I don't know if this is important but in my taskmnger the rundll32.exe is no longer showing, because i read that it was a virus I deleted the .exe files, however I was also under the impression that if it is an essential windows system it automatically comes out of the trashcan.

I've reinstalled my video card and video drivers yet nadda, anyone got any ideas?

[Akula]

Don't know if it might help but I once had the same problems with ZoneAlarm, it did the same when i started a game, don't know why it did it, but the only solution I found was to remove the program

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Rundll isn't a virus; it's a windows executable for running dll's as .exe's and deleting it is probably what caused the problems.

[Starhawk]

Well I actually deleted it AFTER the problems had all started.
I deleted it when all the problems started because people said it was a virus registered to a trojan horse.

I ran a search for it and found the rundll file but none of the .exe stuff that looks like winzip files.

[Atrocities]

This sounds more like a Video card heat issue or possibly bad drivers... Unless you have been picking things up via P2P sites or BT sights I would not believe this to be a virus/trojan.

However, update your virus defs, get STINGER, (McAfee tool to hund down trojans) and a good spy ware killer like SpyBot or Pest Patrol and run them.

Also update your drives for your video card. Back up your important files and keep backing them up just incase.

[Starhawk]

Well actually I've been downloading from P2P but I scanned all of them with AVG to make sure that they were clean and it said they were.

I have also done system restore to a date prior to me downloading my most recent file and nadda it still does this.

I've reinstalled Nvidia twice and redownloaded the drivers twice and still no joy, I've run scans on my hard drive and it said "indexes" were damaged so I told it to fix those, and it claims it has yet the same problem is still there.

It looks like I'm going to have to erase my hard drive and start over again, the fear there is I don't want to lose my modified devnull that I have been playing the Icara game on, much less all my music/books/my own story/models/shipsets but I can't possibly save all of it to disk, I've transfered some to my friend via e-mail and I plan on sending some to my sister's comp if her's can handle the transfer....but overall it's still pretty depressing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Fyron]

I suggest running a scan with HijackThis (http://www.merijn.org/index.html) and posting the log over in a new thread on the DSL Reports Security forum (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/security). Lots of knowledgeable people frequent those boards. DO NOT go about wantonly fixing things that HijackThis detects! Many of them will be legitimate processes. It detects literally everything.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Are all your fans running? We missed that once and ended up with a burnt out power supply. (Sorry if you already posted that, but I didn't see it)

[Starhawk]

Yeah my comp is nice and cool, unfortunately it is appearing to be more and more a hard drive failure not a hardware issue.

[Atrocities]

Ya I read an article about how Seagate, western digital, maxator, and a few no name brands have been getting dinged lately over HD failures. Seems like the the larger the drive the short the life.

[Starhawk]

I am using an E-Machines, my folks heard they were great! yeah it lasted a few years now it's having major hard drive foul ups!

So I'll reboot the entire hard drive (if the E-machines butt wipes will give me the windows CD they neglected to include in my package) And hope it lasts another few years before fragging out again.....grrrrr

[TurinTurambar]

Do what Fyron said. You're going to have to put some time and effort into this. It doesn't sound like a bad harddrive.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to have a second harddrive. Keep your $h!+ away from the OS so if it goes you don't lose all your work. Save all your stuff you never want to lose away from your boot drive. Period.

Turin

[Suicide Junkie]

Starhawk said:
So I'll reboot the entire hard drive (if the E-machines butt wipes will give me the windows CD they neglected to include in my package) And hope it lasts another few years before fragging out again.....grrrrr

Grab a copy of Belarc Advisor. It will tell you your CD key, and a ton of other stuff you might be interested in.

Be sure to note down what hardware you have, so you can get the drivers you need when you reinstall.

http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html

[Starhawk]

Thanks all I'll look this all over on Saturday and see what I can find if anything that can help me.

[Fyron]

HijackThis log posted on DSL Reports security forum is your best bet. Reinstalling the OS is a very drastic measure and very rarely necessary.

[Starhawk]

Hi all, well i created a security report for my comp after I scanned it with hijack this and went to the forums you said, unfortunately they want me to go through a checklist that I've already done a bunch of times prior to actually posting my report.

I've run spyware and virus killers many times to no effect so what do they mean by do that or they'll lock my post?

Anyway if any of you guys could take a look at the report that would be great.

[Fyron]

Could you provide a link to the post?

[Starhawk]

I didn't post because it said I had to run through the checklist prior to posting or my thread would be locked, I did run the checklist but I don't know how to "prove" I did it.

[Fyron]

Just type a list of the programs you ran to scan your computer and the steps you have taken so far. You don't need to "prove" anything...