Computer beginning to go mad!!

[stjohn]

good evening techies.... my head is beginning to get wrecked and ill tell you why..

ive noticed that my computer getting a slight bit slower and its been crashing here and there. maybe if i lay out all the info, it might be possible for someone to pinpoint my problem. alot of this may seem irrelevant but i said id put it in anyway just in case...

1 recently became a member of audionews, so ive been installling loads of *new* software

2 i put in a new sata Hrd Disk, which is purely for storage and audio

3 the crashes happen alot during ableton sessions.

4 when i log onto MSN.... msn kinda freezes for a few minutes and then works grand.

5 i turned on my computer 2day to get a serious error message which gave me this spiel::

BCCode : 100000d1 BCP1 : F7190F90 BCP2 : 00000002 BCP3 : 00000008
BCP4 : F7190F90 OSVer : 5_1_2600 SP : 2_0 Product : 768_1
C:\DOCUME~1\Rory\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER9269.dir00\Mini0 91006-01.dmp
C:\DOCUME~1\Rory\LOCALS~1\Temp\WER9269.dir00\sysda ta.xml

sorry if that is all gobbldy-gook, i just thought id include everything. i reckon the evidence points to 'overuse' of my audionews membership, but if anyone has any other suspicions..... please let me know and ill be forever grateful. otherwise ill have to go and remove all my new programs :(

thanks in advance!!

[dan the acid man]

strange, how long have you had the hard drive ? has it only happened since you had that ?

also, have you got anti virus ? if so have you runa check on all your files

[stjohn]

yea...i only have the HD a week or so, and its been happening since then....but ive also installed the new software around the same time... so its hard to call.

i forgot to add that when i get the crashes in ableton... its trying to open one particular session, and i get that blue screen with all the nonsense on it...

ive run adaware, reg mechanic and avg scan, aswell as defragging the disk. and got rid of the shit. altho i just downloaded another one called Rgistry Fix, which found a good few more problems, and it said that these problems could be causing the crashes etc.....

[stjohn]

hmmm...that Registry Fix seems to have cleared some of hte problems.... i can now open that one ableton session...
but i still have a weird feeling about the state of my machine...!!

thanks dan btw for the reply!! ;)

[dan the acid man]

see how it runs now then, registry problems can cause loads of errors, so it maybe sorted

[TechMouse]

i forgot to add that when i get the crashes in ableton... its trying to open one particular session, and i get that blue screen with all the nonsense on it...
Next time you get one of these, have a closer look.

More often than not it will point to whichever file it is that the error has arisen in. It might be a simple driver issue or something that can be sorted with an upgrade.

[theledge]

If you have been installing a lot of free software or warez then it's likely you have malware or spyware of some sort. Its a nightmare

I rooted three keyloggers out of my PC recently which were missed by all the anti virus and spyware software on my PC (which is quite a lot)

Good ones I've found are:
SpyBot (free - picks up various dodginess others miss)
HijackThis (also free. Doesnt work in the same way as others. You need to scan your pc with it and post the results up on a forum where people will root through them and check them. I found two keyloggers using this that all others including Spybot missed)

I also found another nasty keylogger using this online scan:
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Finally try using msconfig (type msconfig in Start Menu > Run) go to the Startup tab and do a Google search on each entry in the list. It is possible to find various viruses etc by doing this and you can also clean up your system an awful lot. :)

[stjohn]

i just got another blue screen there TechMouse, but i wasnt on long enough to see where the problem was...

thanks ledge, solid advice!!.... ill give those 3 a try, hopefully i get it sorted!!

cheers again people... its a nightmare when this shit starts happening... my new-ish machine cant even handle 2 instances of Reaktor now without going a bit mad.

[stjohn]

what forum did u post your results on ledge?

tis cool...on techsupportforum.com now

[theledge]

i have forgotten although if you search on Google for Hijackthis you will find something for sure.

However it is quite easy to do it yourself, use the same technique as for msconfig above. Run hijackthis (choose the system scan only option) and do a google search for each item which appears on the list. It normally doesnt take long to work out whether it is dubious or not.

I would recommend backing up before doing it , and dont be too quick to delete stuff youre not sure about as most of what it finds will be legit stuff from Windows or other apps. But if you are careful it really is the most effective way to clean up your system

[theledge]

one last thing is to use all the other stuff first before Hijackthis as it could save you a bit of work ;)

[stjohn]

thanks.... ye that forum im on now says to run these:

* Ad-Aware® SE Personal Edition
*Note* For Ad-AwareSE also install the VX2 Add-on Cleaner To run this tool once Adaware is updated click on Add-ons in the left-hand column. Select VX2 Cleaner V2.0 and click Run Tool. Click "OK" , then, if something is found, click "Clean" as in the directions given. Click "Close", and exit Ad-Aware.
* Spybot Search & Destroy
* CWShredder

as well as the others.. they might find everything... if not ill get the HijaCK report

thanks mate

[stjohn]

hmmmm. the 2nd thing on my Start up was 'NvCpl' which is a registered worm!!! not good! :)

Description:
nvcpl.exe is a process which is registered as W32.SpyBot.S Worm. It takes advantage of the Windows LSASS vulnerability, which creates a buffer overflow and instigates your computer to shut down. To see more information about this vulnerability please look at the following Microsoft bulletin: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-011.mspx.

is disabling this enough or should i go about deleting it all together?

[theledge]

Disabling it in msconfig should stop it from loading after you next restart your pc although a few more sophisticated ones might get round it

Also try searching for some more information about it using Google. You should be able to find out which files/registry keys it creates and delete them manually, basically this is usually all the Antispyware software does anyway

Hijackthis can help do that to.

Its amazing how much stuff the antispyware software can miss!!

[stjohn]

yea man....its all very worrying... coz i try to keep away from dodgy sites and shit like that...

thanks for your help again man... im learning alot.

[theledge]

I never realised myself until about a month ago. A few dodgy things started happening with my pc and a bit of digging got me onto the same tip you're on now. Bloody scary!!

Most of these dont come from dodgy websites but from "legitimate" free software downloaded from tucows.com or whatever.

Cracks and keygens are another really dodgy area.

All you can do is keep checking msconfig or whatever from time to time, run spybot every week or so too. Its inevitable you'll pick a few of these up if you use warez or "free" software

One other thing is a decent firewall, I use outpost which is free and very powerful - it shows you exactly who is connecting to your PC and from where, so you can monitor if there's any strange stuff going on

[TechMouse]

i just got another blue screen there TechMouse, but i wasnt on long enough to see where the problem was...

thanks ledge, solid advice!!.... ill give those 3 a try, hopefully i get it sorted!!

cheers again people... its a nightmare when this shit starts happening... my new-ish machine cant even handle 2 instances of Reaktor now without going a bit mad.

There's a setting in control panel which stops your PC from rebooting by default in a crash scenario. That way, the Blue Screen stays up for a bit longer so you can see the error message.

Alternatively you can look in the system log.

[TechMouse]

Another thing to remember is that it's worth keeping your PC bang up to date with the latest patches from WindowsUpdate. There are lots of vulnerabilities that will just continue to be a problem unless you patch them.