Weird things keep happening

[blue_70517]

1. All the shortcut icons go from white boxes with black arrows to some random picture.

2. When I go into control/internet options and clean the history, cookies, and temp files, after closing it, my dial-up pops up. I close the dial-up window and it keeps asking. I have to do that about 5 times before it stops.

3. My disk space changes a lot. Antivirus programs, Spybot, Pest Patrol, and Adaware say I'm clean. I even ran Scan Disk and the disk space went back to normal for a while, but not anymore.

4. This one's not as important to fix but I wanted to post it anyway. Autorun for CD-ROM doesn't work anymore. Whatever CD I'd put in would autorun, but now I have to go into my CD-ROM drive to open the CD.

What is going on here? :dizzy:

[Wainui]

Do a Scanreg Restore.
Power up the computer and after the self test beep, press and hold the Ctrl key to invoke the Boot menu.
Choose Command prompt.
Type Scanreg /Restore and hit enter. (note: ther is a space between Scanreg and /).
Choose the most recent Registry backup marked as "started" then hit enter and enter again.
Windows should now start, if it doesn't, repeat the above process and choose the next older Registry backup.

[blue_70517]

I did that, but everything has restarted. How do I get my pop up blocker, my email addresses, the old emails I had saved, etc, back to the way they were last just before I used scanreg?

Will EZ Recovery in the Control panel get it back from the last backup? The last backup I have listed is August 22nd.

[blue_70517]

scanreg restore worked for about a day. All the pictures were normal, but now they're messed up again, and lots of disk space keeps getting eaten away.

[Murf]

You may have SPYWARE/MALWARE or a VIRUS

Download and run SPYBOT (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html)

Fix what it finds.

Reboot

Now download and run AdWareSE (http://www.download.com/3000-2144-10045910.html)

Fix what it finds.

Reboot

If you still have the problem then download and run HiJackThis (http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html)

Read the instructions and post you log HERE (http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=45&f=25)

[blue_70517]

I have all 3 of them. Ad-aware and hijack are updated. I keep checking for spybot updates but it looks like they haven't updated the definitions in a while. All 3 came out clean.

[Murf]

Sorry, you told us that in your original post.

Try a repair

START | RUN

Type in

SFC

Hit OK

Check for Altered Files, have Windows 98 CD ready.

[blue_70517]

I have the log from when I scanned it. It has 51 file changes. Does anyone on here by chance look at SFC log files, cause some of these have changed dates and other things.

Most of them have that the files were updated. Do I choose to update them, or do I just restore all of them?

[edsdesk]

good question. Look at the dates and file versions of each. If it is a later version, or date, select update, aqnd it's ok. If an ealier version got snuck in, you may want to restore to later one. Depends on how it happened. If you added hardware and drivers from junkyard, you may want to use the earlier. Otherwise the ealier version of any file is not often the best.


If the files are absent (lost or deleted), you are prompted to ignore, or to restore. Think back, did you uninstall anything? Often the abreviated file name tells you what it is. It can also be an old browser page that deleted itself on schedule, and you don't want it anymore. You must be the judge of that. look up each in here: Start > find > files and folders (paste missing file) > look in all of C: and then click it's properties. It's complete location is on the front page of that box. Paste that location into the repair box in SFC, and hit go. It reinstalls.

I trust you ran scandisc in safe mode, and defrag as well before this juncture? That fixes lots of stuff.

After all this cleaning up and still buggy, you might have a hardware failure impending.

[blue_70517]

If an ealier version got snuck in, you may want to restore to later one. Depends on how it happened. If you added hardware and drivers from junkyard, you may want to use the earlier. Otherwise the ealier version of any file is not often the best.
Ok, here's one scenario I got from sfc. HH.EXE is one of the files that popped up.

The PREVIOUS version (left side of file checker) says 6/10/02 and 1:56 p.m.

The CURRENT version (right side) says 6/10/02 and 12:56 p.m.

So, according to this the current version is older than the previous one. Do I restore or update?

Here's another one, just to figure out what to do cause this is pretty confusing.
QFECHECK.EXE Previous is 7/27/98 at 2:48/Current is same date but at 3:48. Both are the same versions. What do you suggest there?