M
MMAdojo
Never had any issues with girlfriend's machine running XP Home SP2
40GB 256MB RAM, 2.0 P4, until last night. I always run virus scan
and utilities compliments of System Mechanic 6's suite of trust
tools. I stress, I have never had a problem with this machine
I used Norton Partition Magic to resize an active ntsc partition o
the primary (only) harddrive. It is a 40 GB hd and had about 20 G
free. So I decided to resize the partion (C) to 30 GB and the
create a new 10 GB partition in the newly added space to use fo
backup or whatever. I clicked apply and the program did its thin
and then prompted me to restart to reflect the changes
As it booted back up, it went into a norton partion magic screen whic
showed a couple progress bars indicating where it was at as far a
performing the tasks I had asked it to do. When it was all said an
done, it restarted again to reflect changes. This is where I thin
it started going down hill. As I watched it sucessfully restart, th
chkdsk utility started and told me that one or more drives needed t
be checked or verified (or something like that). I let it do it
thing, while I left the room for about 30 seconds. When I returned
it had started something new automatically - it was listing of
hundreds of the following
Deleting an index entry with Id 256 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 257 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 258 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 259 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 260 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 261 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 262 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 263 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 264 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 256 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 261 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 264 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 260 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 258 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 263 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 259 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 257 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 262 from index $SDH of file 9
Then as soon as it ended with that it started listing off THOUSAND
of
Replacing invalid security id with default security id for file 11
Replacing invalid security id with default security id for file 29
Replacing invalid security id with default security id for fil
...........
AND THIS WENT ON FOR A GOOD 15 MINUTES. Unsure of why and what it wa
doing and fearful of stopping it in the middle of what it was doin
somehow, I allowed it to continue. The number at the end always gre
and grew, and must have gone through at least 100,000
From that point on, here are things that are happening. PLEASE HELP
this is my girlfriends computer, and she is pissed. Again, never ha
an issue. So here goes..
These are in order from my standpoint as I tried various things.
First, a program that she had been using for her Philips MP3 playe
(a device manager program) that was one of the startup programs
opened a pop-up error that said that it was unable to open and neede
to close. Your standard program x has encountered a problem and need
to close dialog box. Next, I noticed that the darn taskbar wasn't o
the screen, except for what looked like the very top of it. Jus
like if you were to resize it when it is not locked, and you ca
still see the very top of it just so you have something to grab on t
resize again. I right-clicked what was visible and it brought up th
menu that normally comes up when you click the task-bar (lock
toolbars, properties, etc.) Everything was checked that had bee
checked before in the toolbar part. For her it was, windows medi
player, and quick launch. But no task bar. So I clicked o
properties from within that same menu and opened the taskbar an
start menu properties window. I unchecked "show quick
launch" and then checked it again, for no other reason than I
wanted to see if it made a difference. It did. All of a sudden, the
task bar showed up but with a lot more quick launch icons then ever
before. This is when it gets weird. I right-clicked the now visible
taskbar, went to "toolbars" and unchecked quick launch. As
soon as I did the darn task bar disappeared again. Repeating the
same steps as above I got it to display again, follwed by me
unchecking something and having it disappear again and again. This
happens with any of the toolbars and not just quick launch. If I
check "links" or "addresses", the task bar shows
up immediately but as soon as you uncheck all of the toolbars, it
disappears. (??)
Next, it got even crazier. If I open and explore anything, say my
computer or any other folder on my (her) desktop, it opens as normal.
But when I go to minimize it, instead of minimizin to the taskbar, it
will do one of two things, depending on the taskbar setting I have
checked. One, if I have the "keep the taskbar on top of other
windows" checked, whatever I am minimizing will minimize just
above the taskbar and then allows you to move the little minimized
window wherever you want to. Or two, if I have "keep the
taskbar on top of other windows" UN-checked, and I try to
minimize whatever window I have open, it completely minimizes off the
screen. the only way at that point to bring it back is to
ctrl-alt-delete and click "switch-to" in the task manager.
Ok so at this point I am getting worried and I decide to look around
and see if anything else is acting crazy. I started opening and
closing programs that had been installed and working perfectly prior
to this incident. At random, I opened Photoshop CS2, calculator,
winamp, Firefox (verified that I had a working internet connection),
Macro Freehand MX, Limewire, StyleXP, all without problem other than
the minimizing issues which remain the same.
Then I tried windows media player and I got the following message
"cannot perform operation, low memory". Important to
mention, I had closed all the other programs already that had been
opened succesfully. So now I have a handful of programs working just
fine, but now one program isn't - windows media player. So I continue
with my hunt and start to find other problems. I opened up her
documents and tried opening up some of her saved pictures of random
formats, jpeg, bitmap, gif, etc. All would view in filmstrip mode,
but if I double-click to open them fully, nothing would happen. I
right-clicked each kind of picture and went to properties, and made
sure that the "opens with" program was defaulted to
"windows picture and fax viewer" which I always had used
before. Still no luck in opening the pictures, UNLESS, I right-click
and select "open with..." Then if I select windows picture
and fax viewer, it opens up right away the way it should. (??)
So now I am thinking all sorts of things including virus, so I decide
to run System Mechanic and see what it finds. But now I can't. Now
it is one of the programs that can't open no matter what, but with
this one it pops up the typical xp dialog "system mecahic
encountered a problem and needs to close" followed by the option
to close or report the problem. Now I am getting pissed! Then I
realize that a system restore should help me get back to where I need
to be. So I click start, go to all programs, accessories, and then
find and try to start system restore. But when I click on it,
instead of opening it it says this: "System Restore is not able
to protect your computer. Please restart your computer and then run
system restore again." What the heck? So I did that. I
restarted, again and again and again, all with the same sets of
problems - everything I have already described including the system
restore part. Also between the restarts, I accessed the hardware
device manager, but eventhough it populated all the installed
hardware, I could not open the properties for anything listed. Also,
no file on the desktop can be moved, copied, or sent to... A lot of
the websites she normally went to that required a login, do not load
now either. That is pretty much where I gave up except for one other
thing I noticed when I later went to my computer at another spot in
the house. I decided to try to access our shared network that I had
created which had always worked. Her computer, when I tried to
access its shared folders, said that it was not accessible due to
either lost connection, permission restrictions, etc. However if I
then go back to the problem computer and try to access my computers
shared folders and shared printer, I can just fine.
So this is super long I know, but can anyone answer these questions
and problems. PLEASE HELP. I would characterize my skill level at a
higher than normal level, but I have never had this type of thing
happen before and am completly stumped. Is this fixable? She wants
to kill me!
40GB 256MB RAM, 2.0 P4, until last night. I always run virus scan
and utilities compliments of System Mechanic 6's suite of trust
tools. I stress, I have never had a problem with this machine
I used Norton Partition Magic to resize an active ntsc partition o
the primary (only) harddrive. It is a 40 GB hd and had about 20 G
free. So I decided to resize the partion (C) to 30 GB and the
create a new 10 GB partition in the newly added space to use fo
backup or whatever. I clicked apply and the program did its thin
and then prompted me to restart to reflect the changes
As it booted back up, it went into a norton partion magic screen whic
showed a couple progress bars indicating where it was at as far a
performing the tasks I had asked it to do. When it was all said an
done, it restarted again to reflect changes. This is where I thin
it started going down hill. As I watched it sucessfully restart, th
chkdsk utility started and told me that one or more drives needed t
be checked or verified (or something like that). I let it do it
thing, while I left the room for about 30 seconds. When I returned
it had started something new automatically - it was listing of
hundreds of the following
Deleting an index entry with Id 256 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 257 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 258 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 259 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 260 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 261 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 262 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 263 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 264 from index $SII of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 256 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 261 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 264 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 260 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 258 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 263 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 259 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 257 from index $SDH of file 9
Deleting an index entry with Id 262 from index $SDH of file 9
Then as soon as it ended with that it started listing off THOUSAND
of
Replacing invalid security id with default security id for file 11
Replacing invalid security id with default security id for file 29
Replacing invalid security id with default security id for fil
...........
AND THIS WENT ON FOR A GOOD 15 MINUTES. Unsure of why and what it wa
doing and fearful of stopping it in the middle of what it was doin
somehow, I allowed it to continue. The number at the end always gre
and grew, and must have gone through at least 100,000
From that point on, here are things that are happening. PLEASE HELP
this is my girlfriends computer, and she is pissed. Again, never ha
an issue. So here goes..
These are in order from my standpoint as I tried various things.
First, a program that she had been using for her Philips MP3 playe
(a device manager program) that was one of the startup programs
opened a pop-up error that said that it was unable to open and neede
to close. Your standard program x has encountered a problem and need
to close dialog box. Next, I noticed that the darn taskbar wasn't o
the screen, except for what looked like the very top of it. Jus
like if you were to resize it when it is not locked, and you ca
still see the very top of it just so you have something to grab on t
resize again. I right-clicked what was visible and it brought up th
menu that normally comes up when you click the task-bar (lock
toolbars, properties, etc.) Everything was checked that had bee
checked before in the toolbar part. For her it was, windows medi
player, and quick launch. But no task bar. So I clicked o
properties from within that same menu and opened the taskbar an
start menu properties window. I unchecked "show quick
launch" and then checked it again, for no other reason than I
wanted to see if it made a difference. It did. All of a sudden, the
task bar showed up but with a lot more quick launch icons then ever
before. This is when it gets weird. I right-clicked the now visible
taskbar, went to "toolbars" and unchecked quick launch. As
soon as I did the darn task bar disappeared again. Repeating the
same steps as above I got it to display again, follwed by me
unchecking something and having it disappear again and again. This
happens with any of the toolbars and not just quick launch. If I
check "links" or "addresses", the task bar shows
up immediately but as soon as you uncheck all of the toolbars, it
disappears. (??)
Next, it got even crazier. If I open and explore anything, say my
computer or any other folder on my (her) desktop, it opens as normal.
But when I go to minimize it, instead of minimizin to the taskbar, it
will do one of two things, depending on the taskbar setting I have
checked. One, if I have the "keep the taskbar on top of other
windows" checked, whatever I am minimizing will minimize just
above the taskbar and then allows you to move the little minimized
window wherever you want to. Or two, if I have "keep the
taskbar on top of other windows" UN-checked, and I try to
minimize whatever window I have open, it completely minimizes off the
screen. the only way at that point to bring it back is to
ctrl-alt-delete and click "switch-to" in the task manager.
Ok so at this point I am getting worried and I decide to look around
and see if anything else is acting crazy. I started opening and
closing programs that had been installed and working perfectly prior
to this incident. At random, I opened Photoshop CS2, calculator,
winamp, Firefox (verified that I had a working internet connection),
Macro Freehand MX, Limewire, StyleXP, all without problem other than
the minimizing issues which remain the same.
Then I tried windows media player and I got the following message
"cannot perform operation, low memory". Important to
mention, I had closed all the other programs already that had been
opened succesfully. So now I have a handful of programs working just
fine, but now one program isn't - windows media player. So I continue
with my hunt and start to find other problems. I opened up her
documents and tried opening up some of her saved pictures of random
formats, jpeg, bitmap, gif, etc. All would view in filmstrip mode,
but if I double-click to open them fully, nothing would happen. I
right-clicked each kind of picture and went to properties, and made
sure that the "opens with" program was defaulted to
"windows picture and fax viewer" which I always had used
before. Still no luck in opening the pictures, UNLESS, I right-click
and select "open with..." Then if I select windows picture
and fax viewer, it opens up right away the way it should. (??)
So now I am thinking all sorts of things including virus, so I decide
to run System Mechanic and see what it finds. But now I can't. Now
it is one of the programs that can't open no matter what, but with
this one it pops up the typical xp dialog "system mecahic
encountered a problem and needs to close" followed by the option
to close or report the problem. Now I am getting pissed! Then I
realize that a system restore should help me get back to where I need
to be. So I click start, go to all programs, accessories, and then
find and try to start system restore. But when I click on it,
instead of opening it it says this: "System Restore is not able
to protect your computer. Please restart your computer and then run
system restore again." What the heck? So I did that. I
restarted, again and again and again, all with the same sets of
problems - everything I have already described including the system
restore part. Also between the restarts, I accessed the hardware
device manager, but eventhough it populated all the installed
hardware, I could not open the properties for anything listed. Also,
no file on the desktop can be moved, copied, or sent to... A lot of
the websites she normally went to that required a login, do not load
now either. That is pretty much where I gave up except for one other
thing I noticed when I later went to my computer at another spot in
the house. I decided to try to access our shared network that I had
created which had always worked. Her computer, when I tried to
access its shared folders, said that it was not accessible due to
either lost connection, permission restrictions, etc. However if I
then go back to the problem computer and try to access my computers
shared folders and shared printer, I can just fine.
So this is super long I know, but can anyone answer these questions
and problems. PLEASE HELP. I would characterize my skill level at a
higher than normal level, but I have never had this type of thing
happen before and am completly stumped. Is this fixable? She wants
to kill me!