J
J.A. Mason
My troubles began last Sunday. My daughter had been browsing the Web,
and when I got on my laptop computer after her, there was an unending
stream of popups and messages re: spyware and other popups trying to
get me to d/l their software to deal with the spyware 'found' on my
system. I went into my XP Pro Control Panel to remove these programs
that had installed themselves on my computer. My computer was very
slow...it took forever for any of the processes to complete. I then
ran Adware to remove any tracking programs left. It found over a
hundred, but supposedly removed them. Then I ran Norton's, but it
didn't find any viruses. At that point, I thought everything was
fixed & shut down & went to bed.
The real nightmare began Mon a.m., when I booted up my laptop. It was
'caught' in this terrible loop; it would almost be completed booted,
then just before my desktop completed loading, a black (DOS-like)
screen would suddenly appear in the middle of my desktop & the entire
system would reboot. After watching this cycle for about 3-4 times, I
finally realized it was somehow connected to my wireless network card,
so I took out the card, leaving me without an internet connection.
Since then, my system has run very poorly. My Start menu can't be
accessed. When I move the mouse pointer anywhere in the task bar of
the desktop, it turns to an hourglass as if it's waiting for some
process to complete. Sometimes my harddrive light runs on for many,
many minutes...in Task Manager it shows 2 or 3 copies of svchost.exe
running and utilizing like 85% of the CPU resources. This is when no
programs are open or running. I can't really run any programs
anymore, all I can do is get into my files via a desktop icon (NEVER
via the Start Menu) and look through various files. I guess if worse
came to worse, I could cut & copy my most essential documents to about
1,000 floppies and wipe the drive.
I've tried repairing WinXP about 4 times. Each time I get an error
message towards the end of the install -unregmp2.exe entry point not
found-"The procedure entry point GETIUMS could not be located in the
dynamic link library MSDART.DLL." This doesn't stop the install, just
comes up in a window.
The install completes, and yet nothing is fixed. In fact, when the
install completes at first, my view screen is reduced to very small.
But without doing anything to my settings, once I re-boot, I have a
full screen view again, but without any other problems fixed.
I suspect there must be a worm or SOMETHING that has messed up my
system like this. Yet, I don't know how or where to begin looking for
them. Is my only hope a complete disk wipe & re-install?
I realize this is quite long, and if there is a better list for this
to be posted on, please move this there.
Thanks for any help you can offer. I'm at my wits end!
Jane
and when I got on my laptop computer after her, there was an unending
stream of popups and messages re: spyware and other popups trying to
get me to d/l their software to deal with the spyware 'found' on my
system. I went into my XP Pro Control Panel to remove these programs
that had installed themselves on my computer. My computer was very
slow...it took forever for any of the processes to complete. I then
ran Adware to remove any tracking programs left. It found over a
hundred, but supposedly removed them. Then I ran Norton's, but it
didn't find any viruses. At that point, I thought everything was
fixed & shut down & went to bed.
The real nightmare began Mon a.m., when I booted up my laptop. It was
'caught' in this terrible loop; it would almost be completed booted,
then just before my desktop completed loading, a black (DOS-like)
screen would suddenly appear in the middle of my desktop & the entire
system would reboot. After watching this cycle for about 3-4 times, I
finally realized it was somehow connected to my wireless network card,
so I took out the card, leaving me without an internet connection.
Since then, my system has run very poorly. My Start menu can't be
accessed. When I move the mouse pointer anywhere in the task bar of
the desktop, it turns to an hourglass as if it's waiting for some
process to complete. Sometimes my harddrive light runs on for many,
many minutes...in Task Manager it shows 2 or 3 copies of svchost.exe
running and utilizing like 85% of the CPU resources. This is when no
programs are open or running. I can't really run any programs
anymore, all I can do is get into my files via a desktop icon (NEVER
via the Start Menu) and look through various files. I guess if worse
came to worse, I could cut & copy my most essential documents to about
1,000 floppies and wipe the drive.
I've tried repairing WinXP about 4 times. Each time I get an error
message towards the end of the install -unregmp2.exe entry point not
found-"The procedure entry point GETIUMS could not be located in the
dynamic link library MSDART.DLL." This doesn't stop the install, just
comes up in a window.
The install completes, and yet nothing is fixed. In fact, when the
install completes at first, my view screen is reduced to very small.
But without doing anything to my settings, once I re-boot, I have a
full screen view again, but without any other problems fixed.
I suspect there must be a worm or SOMETHING that has messed up my
system like this. Yet, I don't know how or where to begin looking for
them. Is my only hope a complete disk wipe & re-install?
I realize this is quite long, and if there is a better list for this
to be posted on, please move this there.
Thanks for any help you can offer. I'm at my wits end!
Jane