Really odd behaviour in WinXP Pro...

[nkjg]

Hey everyone,

I've got a little bit of a brainbuster for everyone. It
has to do with my girlfriend's computer which has
recently started acting really wierd... I'm in a bit of a
bind since I'm in Toronto until the end of April and
she's back in Vancouver (for all of you who have
forgotten your elementary school geography, it's
basically like New York to L.A) and she's not all that
computer literate.

Computer:
AMD Athlon 1333 MHz
384 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
40 GB HD
CD-RW
Built in audio, video, and networking.

The computer has run just fine for the past 8 months on
XP (it had ME on it before, formatted the drive, did a
clean install).

Here are the syptoms:
The computer starts up just fine and loads into windows
normally. Norton Internet Security updates have been
completed daily and the Norton Anti-virus scanner scans
the hard drive every 3 days (I know this because I set it
up). The scan on Monday (Mar 22) came up as nil. Adaware
scans have also been run on a regular basis (about once a
week).

As of Tuesday (Mar 23), the computer would stop
responding after about 5 minutes. The screen went blank
and the power light on the monitor turned orange (like it
does when there's no signal or the computer is in
standby). The computer is still on (i.e. there is power
and the fans are going), but there is no response. To
check that it wasn't just the video that was cutting out,
I asked her to unplug a usb device after the screen had
shut off to see if Windows would detect the removed
hardware (the classic "ding-dong" when you remove USB
hardware). There was no sound on the speakers.

I asked her to reboot and boot into safe mode with
networking. When she was in, I sent her the FixBlast.exe
(Blaster worm removal tool) from Symantec and told her to
run that. The computer cut out while the scan was
running.

Now here's the part that really has me boggled. I asked
her to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to open up the task manager. When
it came up, she told me that all she saw was the stuff
that normally appears under the "Applications" tab (i.e.
Task, Status, End Task, Switch To, New Task). In the
title bar, there was no "Windows Task Manager" and no
caption buttons, only the little computer icon. There
were no menus and no tabs. The only way for her to close
the taks manager after that was to right click on the
icon in the system tray and select "Close".

Now... what in the world has gone wrong here? I am
completely stumped...

I'm guessing (and dreading) that it will require a clean
install of WinXP to fix this. Like I said, she's not
exactly computer literate, so it's sometimes hard to
explain to her what to do and what things are where (i.e.
I had to tell her that the system tray was beside the
clock, etc).

Does anyone have any suggestions? Please remember that
I've got to explain this over the phone to her, so no big
complicated procedures.

Thanks for all the help in advance.

Nick
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Carey Frisch [MVP]]

Open Task Manager and double-click anywhere on the top Window border.
Somehow, she managed to convert Task Manager to run in "Tiny Footprint Mode".

Task Manager Menu Bar and Tabs Are Not Visible in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314227&Product=winxp

Check for viruses:

Symantec Security Check
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym

Check for the presence of spyware:

Bazooka Adware and Spyware Scanner 1.12
http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10247783.html

Utilize the following Windows XP utility programs in this order:

Description of the Disk Cleanup Tool in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310312&Product=winxp

How to Perform Disk Error Checking in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;315265&Product=winxp

HOW TO: Analyze and Defragment a Disk in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;305781&Product=winxp

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows XP - Shell/User

Be Smart! Protect your PC!
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


| Hey everyone,
|
| I've got a little bit of a brainbuster for everyone. It
| has to do with my girlfriend's computer which has
| recently started acting really wierd... I'm in a bit of a
| bind since I'm in Toronto until the end of April and
| she's back in Vancouver (for all of you who have
| forgotten your elementary school geography, it's
| basically like New York to L.A) and she's not all that
| computer literate.
|
| Computer:
| AMD Athlon 1333 MHz
| 384 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
| 40 GB HD
| CD-RW
| Built in audio, video, and networking.
|
| The computer has run just fine for the past 8 months on
| XP (it had ME on it before, formatted the drive, did a
| clean install).
|
| Here are the syptoms:
| The computer starts up just fine and loads into windows
| normally. Norton Internet Security updates have been
| completed daily and the Norton Anti-virus scanner scans
| the hard drive every 3 days (I know this because I set it
| up). The scan on Monday (Mar 22) came up as nil. Adaware
| scans have also been run on a regular basis (about once a
| week).
|
| As of Tuesday (Mar 23), the computer would stop
| responding after about 5 minutes. The screen went blank
| and the power light on the monitor turned orange (like it
| does when there's no signal or the computer is in
| standby). The computer is still on (i.e. there is power
| and the fans are going), but there is no response. To
| check that it wasn't just the video that was cutting out,
| I asked her to unplug a usb device after the screen had
| shut off to see if Windows would detect the removed
| hardware (the classic "ding-dong" when you remove USB
| hardware). There was no sound on the speakers.
|
| I asked her to reboot and boot into safe mode with
| networking. When she was in, I sent her the FixBlast.exe
| (Blaster worm removal tool) from Symantec and told her to
| run that. The computer cut out while the scan was
| running.
|
| Now here's the part that really has me boggled. I asked
| her to hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to open up the task manager. When
| it came up, she told me that all she saw was the stuff
| that normally appears under the "Applications" tab (i.e.
| Task, Status, End Task, Switch To, New Task). In the
| title bar, there was no "Windows Task Manager" and no
| caption buttons, only the little computer icon. There
| were no menus and no tabs. The only way for her to close
| the taks manager after that was to right click on the
| icon in the system tray and select "Close".
|
| Now... what in the world has gone wrong here? I am
| completely stumped...
|
| I'm guessing (and dreading) that it will require a clean
| install of WinXP to fix this. Like I said, she's not
| exactly computer literate, so it's sometimes hard to
| explain to her what to do and what things are where (i.e.
| I had to tell her that the system tray was beside the
| clock, etc).
|
| Does anyone have any suggestions? Please remember that
| I've got to explain this over the phone to her, so no big
| complicated procedures.
|
| Thanks for all the help in advance.
|
| Nick

 

[nkjg]

Thanks for the reply,

So I've learned something new with the tiny footprint
mode of Task Manager, but the problem still remains about
the fact that her computer still stops working after a
few minutes. I told her to try running a virus scan, and
it cut out right in the middle of it.

Now that she might be able to get back into task manager,
hopefully I can get her to shutdown any suspicious
programs.

Hopefully we'll work this out. If all else fails she
still has the install CD for WinXP.

Thanks again,

Nick
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Bob Dietz]

Thanks for the reply,

So I've learned something new with the tiny footprint
mode of Task Manager, but the problem still remains about
the fact that her computer still stops working after a
few minutes. I told her to try running a virus scan, and
it cut out right in the middle of it.

Now that she might be able to get back into task manager,
hopefully I can get her to shutdown any suspicious
programs.

Hopefully we'll work this out. If all else fails she
still has the install CD for WinXP.

Thanks again,

Nick
(e-mail address removed)




Window border.


in "Tiny Footprint Mode".


Windows XP


this order:


of a


once a

How consistent is the time interval between desktop appears and lockup?

What happens if she powers the machine off and back on - just after one
of these lockups?
A) Chkdsk runs, then it boots normally.
B) Won't reboot.
C) Chkdsk runs, but there are lots of error messages.
D) Something else.

If A, look for a software problem. Maybe in schedualed tasks and/or
services ( START > Run... > services.msc ).

If B, it's almost certainly a hardware problem. (Maybe a power supply
going bad.)

If C, the hard disk is probably failing.

HTH

Bob

 

[Ron Martell]

Thanks for the reply,

So I've learned something new with the tiny footprint
mode of Task Manager, but the problem still remains about
the fact that her computer still stops working after a
few minutes. I told her to try running a virus scan, and
it cut out right in the middle of it.

Now that she might be able to get back into task manager,
hopefully I can get her to shutdown any suspicious
programs.

Hopefully we'll work this out. If all else fails she
still has the install CD for WinXP.

I just had a computer in the shop that had very similar behavior.

The solution was to remove nvsvc.exe and also nvsvc.exe.poly

These two files passed 3 virus scans (Norton 2002, Trend online, and
McAfee Stinger) and also 3 spyware scans (AdAware, Spybot, and
CoolWebShredder; but getting rid of them cleared up the problem.

Nvsvc.exe is ostensibly a driver for nVidia video cards. This machine
did not have an nVidia card (had an old S3 model) but the nVidia
driver had somehow gotten installed and was being loaded at startup.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."

 

[nkjg]

Hey there,

I think I figured out what was wrong.

After getting my firlfriend to "un-tiny" the Task
Manager, I asked her to list off all the processes that
were running. There was the usual CCAPP.exe (Norton),
svchost.exe, etc etc, but then there was one that caught
my eye (well, ear)... "Send The.exe". Now anyone with a
little bit of computer experience will know that "Send
The.exe" is not a ligit program.

I told her to end that process, and then run another Ad-
Aware scan. This time, it came up with about 15 entries.
Deleted them all. Then a Norton scan, nothing. Then a
Spybot S&D, 7 entries, now deleted.

Her computer's been running for about 5 hours now, and
going strong! YAY!!

Thanks for everyone's help!

Nick
(e-mail address removed)

P.S. It's good to see another Canadian on this
board, "eh"? lol

 

[Unknown]

Very simple. Open task manager and double click anywher on its border.