Virus?

[Boomer]

I'm unable to get on the internet (Verizon Fios) or use Outlook on my desktop computer. Thank God for wireless and my laptop! My husband's computers get on the internet just fine. When I boot up my desktop it's fine for about two minutes and then I get a Win32 error message.

Ideas?

I've run Norton, Registry fixes, etc. and nuthin' comes up. Is it some nasty virus, or something stupid on my part? All my other programs seem to work fine and I haven't downloaded anything new lately. I'm running Windows XP.

H-E-L-P!

[rages4calm]

Try checking your hosts file also run spybot search & destroy it sounds like to me there is some sort of spyware blocking your internet access.

[Boomer]

Thanks Carl, I ran Spybot and AdAware to no avail.

[rages4calm]

Originally Posted by Boomer

Thanks Carl, I ran Spybot and AdAware to no avail.

Try trojan remover make sure you don't have a hi-jacker
www.simplysup.com its a trial but it works.

[Boomer]

Ok - I'll give that a shot. I guess I can download it to a CD on my laptop and then upload on my desktop, huh?

Thanks for your ideas!

[rages4calm]

Originally Posted by Boomer

Ok - I'll give that a shot. I guess I can download it to a CD on my laptop and then upload on my desktop, huh?

Thanks for your ideas!

Yep, that should work just fine, Trojan Remover is actually worth buying in the future. Saved my azz millions of times.

[sbp]

I had same thing happen on my old computer luckily I don't have any data on it now. I am putting Linux on it now.

[shutterdrone]

Originally Posted by Boomer

I'm unable to get on the internet (Verizon Fios) or use Outlook on my desktop computer. Thank God for wireless and my laptop! My husband's computers get on the internet just fine. When I boot up my desktop it's fine for about two minutes and then I get a Win32 error message.

Ideas?

I've run Norton, Registry fixes, etc. and nuthin' comes up. Is it some nasty virus, or something stupid on my part? All my other programs seem to work fine and I haven't downloaded anything new lately. I'm running Windows XP.

H-E-L-P!

Umm - what error message are you getting? When did it start? Is it svchost crashing? Could be related to last patch release by ms, on some machines (including my laptop) it borked and didn't install all patches, causing services to crash over and over again, further preventing the gathering of the patches until you manually install them.

!c

[Demonic]

If all above attempts fail, http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
Give that a try, simple little utility that has been a part of my tech arsenal for a while.

[rages4calm]

Originally Posted by Demonic

If all above attempts fail, http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
Give that a try, simple little utility that has been a part of my tech arsenal for a while.

He knows his stuff too so i would definitely try that.

[shutterdrone]

As a follow up to my previous post on the subject, if in fact you _are_ getting errors related to svchost/msi -- microsoft has a fix: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=927891

(In my case, the crashing of both workstation and server services resulted in an inability to access the internet if the happened before I got a DHCP address from the router -- I had to finagle with re-starting services and doing 'ipconfig renew' fast enough before the service crashed again.)

!c

[Demonic]

Originally Posted by shutterdrone

As a follow up to my previous post on the subject, if in fact you _are_ getting errors related to svchost/msi -- microsoft has a fix: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=927891

(In my case, the crashing of both workstation and server services resulted in an inability to access the internet if the happened before I got a DHCP address from the router -- I had to finagle with re-starting services and doing 'ipconfig renew' fast enough before the service crashed again.)

!c

Did you not have a problem with the svchost constantly utilizing 99% of the CPU also? We had about 5 machines on our network (out of a few hundred PCs) that freaked out on those updates, but did not have the problems you described. But we also deploy our own updates and i don't think the guy who manages that pushed all of those out due to horror stories.

[shutterdrone]

Originally Posted by Demonic

Did you not have a problem with the svchost constantly utilizing 99% of the CPU also? We had about 5 machines on our network (out of a few hundred PCs) that freaked out on those updates, but did not have the problems you described. But we also deploy our own updates and i don't think the guy who manages that pushed all of those out due to horror stories.

No, but that happened to another laptop in the office -- only one. (Out of about 40.) Fortunately he had figured out that it was related to the patches the day before, so we at least had a good idea of where to start =)

!c

[Chief]

If I may recommend a last ditch effort, after you have pulled all your hair out. You could always try a system restore to a previous date, before you think it got infected.

just my 1/50th of a dollars worth.

Gordon

[Dobick]

If it is in fact due to the svchost crapping out on you and all of the services quitting, then if you know where to get to the services, we had good luck, just restarting the computer browser service, and was able to resume windows updates, and by the time we realized the problem, ms had a fix in place, so we were able to keep it for the most part under control.