XP has gone unstable

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve O'Neill
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Steve O'Neill

I'm trying to diagnose problems with my daughter's laptop that is
running XP Home. Recently the system has become quite unstable and
last night it appeared to spontaneously switch to the 'classic' view
for the task bar and no longer recognizes the modem.

Previous to this I could not get Norton Anti-Virus to run and msconfig
will run for only a short period before it crashes.

I'm going to try uninstalling the most recent updates that I installed
to see if that helps the situation. But beyond that I'm at a loss on
how to attack this problem (other than trying to reload an image backup
that I did quite a while back).

Any help, suggestions, pointers, advice, condolences... would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks,
Steve
 
Hi Steve

Hi

Have you checked for any spyware that may be on your system:

Ad-Aware - www.lavasoftusa.com
Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org/
CWShredder - http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Also see the following link:
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

--

Will Denny
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
Please reply to the News Groups


| I'm trying to diagnose problems with my daughter's laptop that is
| running XP Home. Recently the system has become quite unstable and
| last night it appeared to spontaneously switch to the 'classic' view
| for the task bar and no longer recognizes the modem.
|
| Previous to this I could not get Norton Anti-Virus to run and msconfig
| will run for only a short period before it crashes.
|
| I'm going to try uninstalling the most recent updates that I installed
| to see if that helps the situation. But beyond that I'm at a loss on
| how to attack this problem (other than trying to reload an image backup
| that I did quite a while back).
|
| Any help, suggestions, pointers, advice, condolences... would be greatly
| appreciated.
|
| Thanks,
| Steve
|
 
Will said:
Hi Steve

Hi

Have you checked for any spyware that may be on your system:

Ad-Aware - www.lavasoftusa.com
Spybot - http://www.safer-networking.org/
CWShredder - http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Also see the following link:
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm
Click to expand...

Yup, BTDT. Adaware found a couple of things yesterday but successfully
purged them from the system (or so it thinks). Now both Adaware and
Spybot give the system a clean bill of health. Which is a Good Thing I
guess.

But there is definitely still something rotten in Denmark - Norton is
seriously messed up, not to mention the msconfig issues and the lack of
perfectly good modems.

Back when there was a modem the system would immediately begin
sending/receiving data as soon as the connection was established when
there was nothing running that should have caused this. I was never
able to identify the process doing the I/O.

Last week I had a go round with a couple of worms that required running
Norton in safe mode since it couldn't seem to make the corrections in
normal mode... this was likely the beginning of the downward spiral that
I'm caught up in now.

Steve
 
having imaged the drive may be your saving grace, ie,
if you can make the image bootable.
Would you have the time to explain how that is done?
I would like to image one myself, so I won't have to
rebuild the entire system the next time it goes haywire.

I found a program called xxcopy that will clone os
up to Win Me according to the instructions on the
web site, but, I have XP running on the system
I want to image which xxcopy doesn't support.

although many use Norton, I don't anymore. I think
it causes as many problems as it solves. I use AVG
free edition. You can get it at their web site.

I also don't think you can get norton completely uninstalled
once it has its tenacles throughout your system.
 
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