Very wierd problem.

[Guest]

I have been busy recently trying to track down and delete a host of cryptically named programs which were invasively installed on my pc when I took another idiots advice and went to a wares site(mp3s etc.). After an explosion of pop ups, I decided that wares was not for me. However, since then, everytime I go on the net, There are constant pop ups and worse(My home page is reset everytime I open I.E. to some wierd search engine) annoying me all the time. The upshot of all this is that while hunting this crap on my machine, I seem to have done some damage. For some reason, every app I try to run, tries to run in a dos shell. I see the error "Program too big to fit in memory" flash breifly before the shell window closes and thats it, the app doesn't run. I'm guessing that the apps are also trying to use conventional memory only and that is why the error occurs, but I could be way off as I am an amateur. Any help would be gratefully appriciated.

 

[George Hester]

I hope someone has a better suggestion than what I am going to say. But I think it is time to reinstall a new operating system. Once you've done that then get Ad-Aware to help protect you from things of this nature (changing homepages) in the future. Note getting and running that application now won't change your issue.

 

[John Thomas Smith]

At this point I suggest 2 things...
1 - copy all your files to floppy or zip disk
2 - get a boot disk and start with FORMAT C:

It sounds like you've got things so messed up and cross linked that
there may be NO way to do a repair... especially since any repair
tool wouldn't be able to run!

I have been busy recently trying to track down and delete a host of cryptically named programs which were invasively installed on my pc when I took another idiots advice and went to a wares site(mp3s etc.). After an explosion of pop ups, I decided that wares was not for me. However, since then, everytime I go on the net, There are constant pop ups and worse(My home page is reset everytime I open I.E. to some wierd search engine) annoying me all the time. The upshot of all this is that while hunting this crap on my machine, I seem to have done some damage. For some reason, every app I try to run, tries to run in a dos shell. I see the error "Program too big to fit in memory" flash breifly before the shell window closes and thats it, the app doesn't run. I'm guessing that the apps are also trying to use conventional memory only and that is why the error occurs, but I could be way off as I am an amateur. Any help would be gratefully appriciated.

John Thomas Smith
http://www.direct2usales.com
http://www.pacifier.com/~jtsmith

 

[jason.wolf]

I dont know about the aps thing but my brother had the
home page reset issue. Norton anti-virus got rid of that.
I manually reset the home page and then ran Norton, and
then adaware for good measure. Resolved that issue.

-----Original Message-----
I have been busy recently trying to track down and delete

a host of cryptically named programs which were invasively
installed on my pc when I took another idiots advice and
went to a wares site(mp3s etc.). After an explosion of pop
ups, I decided that wares was not for me. However, since
then, everytime I go on the net, There are constant pop
ups and worse(My home page is reset everytime I open I.E.
to some wierd search engine) annoying me all the time. The
upshot of all this is that while hunting this crap on my
machine, I seem to have done some damage. For some reason,
every app I try to run, tries to run in a dos shell. I see
the error "Program too big to fit in memory" flash breifly
before the shell window closes and thats it, the app
doesn't run. I'm guessing that the apps are also trying to
use conventional memory only and that is why the error
occurs, but I could be way off as I am an amateur. Any
help would be gratefully appriciated.

 

[Steve N.]

You got infested with what's called spyware/adware.

Before you follow all that blanket advice to format and re-install
everything, get Ad-aware and Spybot Serch & Destroy, update them and
scan the system for adware/spyware parasites. Most a/v products don't
detect and clean them.

Steve