Really need help

Hey guys I really need help bad

heres the problem: for the past few days on startup theres been nothing but problems everytime you want to open something the curser arrow and hourglass will do nothing but flash for a few minutes then about 100 windows of the same thing will open repeatedly and theres nothing to do but shut them all down and it does it for everything you open now for the past few days it only did it on startup then would work fine afterwards but this morning when my dad started it up it started doing it even after startup and I cant figure it out now since Im the only other one of his computer I of course get the blame and to fix it or get kicked off so please please help me in any way that you can Ive ran online virus scanners even downloaded avast! and ran it and they all come up clean so I dont believe this to be a virus infection.

-Justin

Update:

Ok now all file operations are going smoothly as they have done in the past several days after startup but I know as soon as I try to restart the computer this same problem will happen thanks for the help guys I know this isnt something Ive done but still im getting blamed :-\

-Justin

Heya, Justin_xp !!

Alright, so you still have the problem, right?

Have you tried starting up in Safe Mode to suppress a bunch of processes from loading into the OS ? Try to salvage your information and diagnose your problems from there.

Otherwise, take a look at your processes list in the task manager to see if anything is going weird (new processes, high memory for one, etc.) . Use CastleCops o23 list and startuplist for searching and tracking down purposes.

I’m sure that you have a bunch of other security apps. Make sure that avast! is updates and perhaps from a boot time scan. Other than that, do some secondary scans for spyware, adware, and other types of malware.

Remember to post back :slight_smile: !!

Hey,

I have tried that already problem is when I brought it up and took everything off unneeded I had to reboot the computer which when rebooted brought up the option for the system configuration utility to not come up again im sure you know the window im talking about and everytime I would try to check for it not to come up again it would just skip right through and reboot Continuously! over and over again I eventually had to go back into safe mode and change it back to normal start up so the problems still here so can someone please help me? im pretty desperate here

-Justin

Darn … I’m sorry I don’t completely know what wrong … (Justin, please write with periods, it’s hard to understand when your thoughts begin and ends.)

Alright, so from what I’m getting, startup is getting weird. (Can’t disable, etc. etc., am I right?)

There are alternative startup managers that you can use, if internet and downloading isn’t a problem. Since this is a security problem, use Winpatrol (http://www.winpatrol.com/). When you double click the icon at the taskbar, choose the startup tab.

There, you can choose to disable AND remove a bunch of startup items. Disabling leaves it there so you can enable again, and removing takes it off completely (doesn’t mean it can’t reinstate itself, so try disable first). Also, before restarting, get to CastleCops and Process Library (http://www.processlibrary.com/) to search for malicious processes (so you can end them via task manager). CastleCops is under maintenance right now, so check some other source for startup and processes (Google).

There might be a rootkit problem, but I’m not sure. Hopefully, you have avast! 4.8 (which includes antirootkit), and for extra measures, get other antirootkits. Check out the recommendations here: http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-rootkit-scanner-remover.htm .

Remember to post back. Also, tell us whether or not there’s internet access and Windows version, etc. All of these recommendations assume that you have internet. Hopefully, this is right. Also, what is avast! telling you (any alerts? if so, post some logfiles).

I hope more experienced users can help you.

Also, ask around what people have been doing with the computer. Any vaguely weird or unknowing click can introduce malware. Recent downloads?

Sorry for my bad punctuation, Recent download are clear nothing that bad at all the only recent downloads have been Finjan and Wot, as well as the Halo Combat evolved trial, I would be able to do more from my end if I had a place to start but this just started hapining randomly so I don’t really have a start point :-\ I’ll have to try the WinPatrol thing hopefully I don’t start another round of endless re-boots.

-Justin

Remember to also check your task manager processes. You are able to track down malware running in the background.

Also, what type of windows are appearing during the startups? Is it the command prompt (classic looking, black window) windows?

If it is, there might be a batch file in your startup, or even something else. Now, to stop that from happening (not needing to close one individually):

open task manager, ctrl+alt+delete
locate the command prompt task, which i believe is cmd.exe
right click and click END PROCESS TREE.
doing that will end that process along with all others that it had started (I do that with internet explorer to end all extra add-on processes and to release memory).

Hey,

Its not really a command prompt windows coming up on startup its that after windows boots and the desktop comes up and things load if you press the task area below the extender arrow it will keep going back and forth repeatedly until I press it and it stops and then if I try to open Firefox? it wont only open one window of it, it literally opens 52 windows each time and I have to manually close them all until I get 1 and my dads email outlook express wont even open but after I close all the Firefox windows everything returns back to normal until the next startup in which it will do the same thing all over again.

-Justin

Bump

Is this XP? If System restore is turned on can you try to restore back to a day before this happened?

you know I never really thought of it and yeah systems restore is turned on and yes it is xp but I do not know if this would solve the problem

Hey, give us an update.

What have you tried and what has failed?
Have you scanned your system with anti-malware products?
Any system restore luck?
How’s the safe mode?

Hey,

Alright the update is Ive scanned the system with every anti-malware product I can think of and everything came up clean except for a remnant of a old “mywebsearch” infection which was easy enough to get rid of besides that I’m doing the system restore on Wednesday gotta get some newer files off of the computer first and safe mode? its normal lol this inst really a “huge” problem its more of a annoyance on startup thats all thanks for all the help you guys have been offering I wasn’t really thinking straight this morning when I got woken up at 6:30 a.m with a “the computer doesn’t work” what I mean is since I play as caretaker for all the computers on my home network I’m usually on top of these type of problems but as ive already said I was pretty much caught by surprise this morning and didn’t think quickly at all

-Justin

Files like word documents and the such will not be removed from the system. Only Applications/Programs and system settings will be rolled back to the date that you choose in System Restore. If it doesn’t help or if something is missing that you needed you can always roll back the Restore Operation. I’ve had situations where I just could NOT track the problem down and System Restore was the answer. I hope your problem gets fixed. Good luck

alright this is really odd but I did a scan today with avast and found nothing after rebooting out of safe mode the computers fine and startup is normal this is really weird ??? but if its alright im happy :slight_smile:

-Justin

please try to use different scanner. because avast anti spyware and trojan detection is quite poor. according to different organization, avast 4.8 lacks some detection. it may say your system is clean. please try to use avg 8.0 download a trial, then scan you pc.

No offense, but I consider Avg any version of it a quite poor scanner no matter what, thats just my opinion though, and I have used different programs SUPERantispyware, Spyware terminator, Malware bytes antimalware and various online scanners, all came up clean, I have also used different rootkit detection tools all clean as well.

-Justin

ok i respect your opinion, as for me ive tested both avg and avast and compare it side by side. installing it on very infected system and clean system and trying to infect it. AVG 8.0 stands out.

Justin,

Your computer may not be suffering from malware, I trialled the free version of Online Armor Firewall when it first came out, and to start with everthing was fine, but after a while every time I opened Task Manager multiple windows opened each containing Task Manager. At this point the computer would also slow to a crawl, just like you I had to close each window individually,and then everything else would work fine. I uninstalled Online Armor and the problem went away, installing it again and the problem was back, so I finally removed it completely from my computer and to date have not seen the problem again. I could not find anyone else who had this problem when I searched the Online Armor Forums, so I concluded that there was most probably some sort of conflict with an existing program, but I have no idea which one.