96303039-74c5-44b8-b34d-78a0714e02d2.exe (or similar) Application Error.

I’ve been getting errors like this on my Win2k computer when restarting and shutting down.

Until today, no error message appeared on screen at start up, but the error sound from Windows indicated something was going on. Nothing shows up in Event Viewer.

The error when shutting down appears twice and is similar to what I’m now seeing at start up, usually naming explorer.exe as the culprit, but not always.

Today however, I got the following message displayed when starting up:

96303039-74c5-44b8-b34d-78a0714e02d2.exe - Application Error
The instruction at 0x77fa2f0c referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be “written”.

Shortly after, I got a BSOD, which seems to happen from time to time ONLY after a cold start. When I restarted the computer, the same error came up with a different, but similarly named, filename. On searching for the file, I found it in my Windows Temp folder. Properties revealed it has something to do with Avast!

The errors seem to have cropped up around the same time Avast! updates started announcing themselves twice, making me wonder if the two things are related, although it’s also possible Windows 2000 it throwing me a red herring and it has nothing to do with Avast!

Any help/suggestions/info would be appreciated.

The exe did not turn up anything in google. “instruction at 0x77fa2f0c” did: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=103306.0

Best regards,

Thanks Kwaret!

I had a closer look at Event Viewer’s logs and spotted something about a missing registry entry for a DLL related to my soundcard. (I missed it before because it’s not flagged as a warning or error ::)) That ties in well with the contents of the link you posted.

Googling for info based on what I found, it looks like I may have had a trojan (W32/Sality.W!15C282D8BDF1) at some point that’s been detected and disabled (probably by Avast!) without being completely removed. I’m still guessing at this point, but I think that may be blocking certain programs and DLL’s, including this one used by Avast!.

Looks like I’ve got some digging to do.

Thanks again for the pointer. It may have helped.