Old problem rears its ugly head again

General Topics
1

Hey guys

Remember awhile ago I posted a problem I am having on this computer of on every startup if I click on the arrow in the system tray it races back and forth repeatedly and that if I open up Firefox it opens up about 80 instances of it and only will things return to normal if I close 79 instances and then shut down the last one and restart Firefox and if I don’t do it in exactly that order the computer is unusable? I ran combofix off of a tip and the computer worked perfectly for about 2 months and well the problems back >:( this is a huge annoyance and I cant figure it out does anyone have any clue as to what this problem could be related to? do you need a HJT report? any help to completely kill this problem would be a huge help
thanks

-Justin

2

Have you tried un-installing FF rebooting and then re-install FF from scratch?

3

I can try but I dont know why that would be causing the problem with the system arrow racing back and forth across and all other programs opening many instances of themselves

4
and all other programs opening many instances of themselves
That wasn't included in your first post. You only mentioned many instances of Firefox.

Try restoring you system to a day prior to when this started to happen.

5

Thats going to be hard to do this was quite awhile ago (june) when it first started to happen

6

do a format and reinstall windows :stuck_out_tongue:

7

If that was the same problem, what did you do back then to fix it?
What’s more puzzling is what caused the problem to come back again ???

You may not have a choice but to follow BJ_GeOrgE’s suggestion.

8

A clean install is kinda extreme, but you might have to go there :frowning:

Have you checked your system logs, maybee there’s a clue in there ???

9

I have checked the system logs and all seems fine a few warnings here and there but nothing that should cause this, and what did I do awhile ago to “fix it” I ran Combofix off of a tip and the problem went away for 2 months. The problem began occurring I believe shortly after I updated windows xp to SP3 about a month after.

10

Huh,

I’d never heard of Combofix, but just researched it… Maybee if that fixed it once, it would do it again ?

I have heard both good and bad things about sp3, about equal amounts of both. My theory has been, if it aint broke, dont fix it. I havn’t played the micro$oft update game for a long time now, but you will hear others say the opposite… I guess if it works for them, they shouldn’t change it, but i’ve seen a lotta problems from M$ updates :frowning:

11

Hey Bunk

Yeah Combofix is a useful tool but what I find odd about it working is that it resets changes made by malware but I’ve scanned this computer with every type of Anti-malware known to man and nothing has been found except for a few false positives.

-Justin

12

Have you tried running CHKDSK? It could be an error in the file system.

13

Try what Mark suggested as that could be the problem.

About 10 years ago, I had a similar problem with IE opening many, many pages. Unfortunately, I do not now remember what solved the problem back then. I think it was some kind of infection but I can not be sure.

14

I ran CHKDSK this morning and will post tomorrow when I turn on the computer if it worked or not

-Jusn

15

What happened with this one bubba ???

I did get my drive swapped out, but never heard back… I now have a new OS, and the fastest drive available, according to the specs :smiley:

Yoy failed to answer my PM