Computer Needed Start-up Repair (Happened Again)

Viruses and worms
1

Hello.
I’m fairly certain SOMETHING is wrong with my computer. It was starting normally. when I shut it off earlier today. I came back, turned it on, and walked out of the room. When I came back, it was attempting to repair itself via system repair. It was successful and started up normally. But I can’t find anything happening out of the ordinary. Quick scans with the free versions of Avast! and Malwarebytes show nothing, and spybot gets no results as well. I just recently got both noscript and adblock-plus to protect firefox while I browse the web as well.
I only received an OTL file. I didn’t get an Extras.

Also, Avast! urged me to run the program in sandbox twice. one said it was connecting to svchost.exe. Don’t know if that’s anything important but everything I notice is suspicious at the moment.

2

Nothing apparent in that log - are you experiencing anything unusual ?

3

I just fixed my computer from a heating problem it had been having for a few months so things were actually just returning to normal. Which is to say I have not experienced anything out of the ordinary. That’s why this shook me so bad.

Thank you for taking the time to look over everything however.

4

If you wish we can look deeper, but if you were suffering from overheating maybe windows was just repairing some corrupt files

5

Well the problem was fixed about a month ago so that seems like a long time to wait to mend some corrupted files; to me at least.

Edit: What exactly do I need to do to dig deeper into this. I’m about to back everything on my system up and would like to make sure what I currently have is clean.

6

(Sorry for this double post)

It happened again. This time I was in the room to catch why. When the system started up I caught a BSOD. I didn’t get a very good look at it, but I think it mentioned data execution prevention and then a system 32 executable file.

7

OK lets look deeper

Download ComboFix from one of these locations:

Link 1
Link 2

* IMPORTANT !!! Save ComboFix.exe to your Desktop

[]Disable your AntiVirus and AntiSpyware applications, usually via a right click on the System Tray icon. They may otherwise interfere with our tools
[]Double click on ComboFix.exe & follow the prompts.

When finished, it shall produce a log for you. Please include the C:\ComboFix.txt in your next reply.

8

Here you are. It deleted two files when all was said and done.

9

Neither of those would have caused your problems

DEP errors are quite common on Vista, although they do not usually go to start up repair

It would help if we knew what programme caused this, but at the moment I can find no sure fire way of determining the programme involved

10

So is there nothing else I can do beyond waiting for it to happen again and getting a better look at the screen?

11

A bit of a pain I know - but yes

You could go Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Action Center\Reliability Monitor and see if there is some more information there

12

Here’s what I get from reliability monitor:
3/3/2011 (First occurrence):
Failure Type: OS Stopped Working
Version: 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2
Failure Detail:
0x00000001
(0x00000000770a6cba,
0x0000000000000000,
0x000000000
Failure Type: Boot Failure
Version: 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2
Failure Detail: 0x1

3/6/2011:
Failure Type: Boot Failure
Version: 6.0.6002 Service Pack 2
Failure Detail: 0x3b

13

That generally points to a RAM failure

Restart the computer to the safe mode menu and select “Memory Diagnostic Tools”
Let it run and see if it finds any problems

14

I’m sorry it took me this long to respond.

The diagnostic found no problem, and the problem hasn’t occurred since my last post (The computer was being used for school purposes at the time, so this got pushed lower in priorities.)

15

Maybe it was just one of those gremlins playing around … So all is OK now ?

16

It seems that way. Although after I ran Combofix I noticed the Avast! icon that resides at the bottom of my screen with the clock doesn’t appear on start-up unless I manually click my desktop link. So do I need to reinstall to fix that?

But other than that, everything seems to be working fine. Thanks for all the help!

17

Run a repair on Avast first - Do you know how to do that ?

18

No, I do not.

19

OK go to control panel Programs and Features
In the uninstall list select Avast
Once the uninstaller starts running you will have the option to uninstall or repair
Select repair, you may need an online connection to do this iif some files are required

20

That fixed it!

Thanks for that bit of help, as well as all the rest.