Quiztar said:
Well I just had the computer in the shop to get a second hard disk put in
and
I've run every free software known to me for disk error checking and to
see
if the drive is failing or near to failing and my drives are good, I
don't
know how to run "cmd" mode in a command window to run Vcleaner.exe but I'd
be
shocked to learn McAfee couldn't find the problem but a free program
could.
McAfee and Norton have (IMHO) too many bells and whistles. What works are
virus scanners that scan for viruses and that's it. I have used many, many
versions of McAfee and found problems. AVG and Avast have never let me down.
I always recommend the good free stuff because when you are having a PC pain
the last thing you want to do is buy a lot of new software.
Running Vcleaner is easy. Download it and copy it to C:\ (C drive root
path). To boot in safe mode restart the PC and when you see the first DOS
text screen, either hold down the left ctrl key or press "F8" several times
until you see the Microsoft Startup Menu. Select safe mode. When the GUI is
all booted up you can click on Start > Run and type "cmd" (no quotes) in the
run box. It stands for "command.com" which is the command interpreter shell
window for in DOS shell mode. At the DOS prompt type "c:\vcleaner.exe" to
run the cleaner. DOS command are case insensitive.
I've had other problems with Lexmark's drivers which I've had to work
around
before. Their fax program causes a critical error in limited Windows XP
accounts, it says the fax program is already running. And when I logout
the
limited used I get a message that FAXCOMM WIndow won't close do I want to
close it or cancel. I close it of course. Then so to fix that I had to
go
into msconfig and take out their fax software from the startup items. I
had
that problem with the Yahoo Widget engine when I wanted to uninstall it
too,
the uninstaller didn't remove it from the startup of msconfig.
Advanced Windows Care does a really good job of cleaning the registry, the
startup, and more.
http://www.iobit.com/
Be sure to read the help files before you get into it. If you have any
registry tweaks or a custom startup that is not default Windows, you have to
add those items to the Ignore List so AWC doesn't remove them.
I do a lot on my hard drive and this computer is barely a year from brand
new so I don't see why it would be the motherboard or the hard drive
controller or the hard drive. Could it be the cheap KINGSTON RAM I have
in
the computer? 2x 1GB 400MHZ/SDRAM?
Possible but not as likely.
I have uninstalled everything extra from bootup. I will try your clean
sweeping method, however I need more instructions on how to erase all of
the
temp files and such. I am not an expert at this stuff nor a beginner. In
the meantime I'll just run with blinders on and hope for the best because
lots of my friends don't even run Microsoft Updates because they don't
want
these errors cropping up.
I run automatic updates on many of my PC's but set it to download but allow
me to choose what to install. This allows me to block installation of any
updates that have bugs. Some can't be uninstalled.
One last site for free tools that I recommend:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/default.mspx
Again, please read the info before you run them.
Good Luck!
Mark