T
TonightsLastSong
Hello, all. I've been scowering the groups and other forums for a
couple of days to try to find a solution to my problem, and at long
last I've come to put my sour news on the table for all to think
about...
I can't honestly say that my problem is related to the new SP1 on my
Vista Ultimate, but it does seemed eerily timed with my issue.
A few days ago, my Window's Explorer started freaking out... Any icons
that I create on the desktop remain "faceless", showing me only the
blank default icon. ANY window launched through the explorer process
will open only a frame, with a blank title bar, empty address and
search bars, and working minimize/close buttons, yet no content. I
see right through where the window content should be, straight into
the background behind it.
Explorer's process is CONSTANTLY stealing away all extra processing
time, rather than giving it to the system idle process. The idle
process *never* has a CPU allotment. It is constantly zero. Explorer
seems to allow other processes to open just fine, and all other
programs seem to open normally. However, any window, including all
"explore" windows, normally "open"ed windows, Control Panel, Programs
and Features window, etc etc... they're all broken. None of them open
properly.
Additionally, my ability to interact with the Start menu is seemingly
busted. When I click on a folder listed there, it changes its icon to
the little hourglass moving around on the little folder, as if it's
trying to discover the files listed therein. It *never* succeeds.
I've left my blank framed windows open all night, just to see if it
would ever finally show me anything, but to no avail.
I've thoroughly scanned my machine with every concievable program, and
I find nothing out of the ordinary, such as spyware or viruses. Every
log file that I make out of Hijack This seems completely normal to
me. All my services running are normal. All my startup entries are
normal. Everything seems normal.
One odd quirk that I noticed only moments ago: While downloading (a
World of Warcraft patch on my faster internet connection for my
brother) using the uTorrent client to obtain it, I discovered that I
can tell uTorrent to open the file's containing folder, and it will
successfully launch a window in Explorer that is fully functional. By
no other means can I seem to achieve this same behavoir out of
Explorer. When this magic uTorrent-spawned Explorer window is
running, it's process in the Task Manager stays at normal CPU
consumption, as expected, while the original explorer process
(presumably the desktop/general interface instance) continues to steal
away the clock cycles.
In order to access my files, I typically have been opening notepad via
a .txt file on my desktop, and choosing "open" and then changing the
file filter to "All files", and then I browse around and rightclick
and choose "open" (so as to actually launch the file, and not open it
in Notepad!!). This works 100%. I have no problems whatsoever with
this approach, other than its innate clunkiness.
The changes I've made in my system seem completely unrelated to this
problem, and even if I did figure out that it was somehow something
that I installed, I cannot so much as open a window to properly choose
to uninstall said program. Recently, I've installed only a trial for
a program called MorphVOX (which seems to be functioning normally... I
don't really care for it in the end, but I can't really unistall it,
given my dillemma) and I was doing some video editing in Adobe
Premiere. (One of Premiere's little byproduct files is on my desktop,
and Explorer *really* stops working entirely if I try to delete it.
Not sure what that's all about.)
Has ANYBODY experienced something similar? I've been booting into my
extra little partition for WinXP recently
Once again, all other
fucntionality seems intact on my machine. All virus and spyware
protection seems uncompromised and running cleanly.
(sorry to be so long winded )
Tim
Dell Dimension 4500S, 1152mb RAM, 2GHz processor, Vista Ultimate SP1,
and a broken generic video card driver that Vista doesn't like
trust me--- that's completely unrelated to my problem!)
couple of days to try to find a solution to my problem, and at long
last I've come to put my sour news on the table for all to think
about...
I can't honestly say that my problem is related to the new SP1 on my
Vista Ultimate, but it does seemed eerily timed with my issue.
A few days ago, my Window's Explorer started freaking out... Any icons
that I create on the desktop remain "faceless", showing me only the
blank default icon. ANY window launched through the explorer process
will open only a frame, with a blank title bar, empty address and
search bars, and working minimize/close buttons, yet no content. I
see right through where the window content should be, straight into
the background behind it.
Explorer's process is CONSTANTLY stealing away all extra processing
time, rather than giving it to the system idle process. The idle
process *never* has a CPU allotment. It is constantly zero. Explorer
seems to allow other processes to open just fine, and all other
programs seem to open normally. However, any window, including all
"explore" windows, normally "open"ed windows, Control Panel, Programs
and Features window, etc etc... they're all broken. None of them open
properly.
Additionally, my ability to interact with the Start menu is seemingly
busted. When I click on a folder listed there, it changes its icon to
the little hourglass moving around on the little folder, as if it's
trying to discover the files listed therein. It *never* succeeds.
I've left my blank framed windows open all night, just to see if it
would ever finally show me anything, but to no avail.
I've thoroughly scanned my machine with every concievable program, and
I find nothing out of the ordinary, such as spyware or viruses. Every
log file that I make out of Hijack This seems completely normal to
me. All my services running are normal. All my startup entries are
normal. Everything seems normal.
One odd quirk that I noticed only moments ago: While downloading (a
World of Warcraft patch on my faster internet connection for my
brother) using the uTorrent client to obtain it, I discovered that I
can tell uTorrent to open the file's containing folder, and it will
successfully launch a window in Explorer that is fully functional. By
no other means can I seem to achieve this same behavoir out of
Explorer. When this magic uTorrent-spawned Explorer window is
running, it's process in the Task Manager stays at normal CPU
consumption, as expected, while the original explorer process
(presumably the desktop/general interface instance) continues to steal
away the clock cycles.
In order to access my files, I typically have been opening notepad via
a .txt file on my desktop, and choosing "open" and then changing the
file filter to "All files", and then I browse around and rightclick
and choose "open" (so as to actually launch the file, and not open it
in Notepad!!). This works 100%. I have no problems whatsoever with
this approach, other than its innate clunkiness.
The changes I've made in my system seem completely unrelated to this
problem, and even if I did figure out that it was somehow something
that I installed, I cannot so much as open a window to properly choose
to uninstall said program. Recently, I've installed only a trial for
a program called MorphVOX (which seems to be functioning normally... I
don't really care for it in the end, but I can't really unistall it,
given my dillemma) and I was doing some video editing in Adobe
Premiere. (One of Premiere's little byproduct files is on my desktop,
and Explorer *really* stops working entirely if I try to delete it.
Not sure what that's all about.)
Has ANYBODY experienced something similar? I've been booting into my
extra little partition for WinXP recently
Once again, all otherfucntionality seems intact on my machine. All virus and spyware
protection seems uncompromised and running cleanly.
(sorry to be so long winded
)Tim
Dell Dimension 4500S, 1152mb RAM, 2GHz processor, Vista Ultimate SP1,
and a broken generic video card driver that Vista doesn't like
trust me--- that's completely unrelated to my problem!)