[Dr. BaconStein]

So I ended up getting nailed by one of these yesterday. It was under "Videos Recommended" and I was feeling impulsive, way to go YouTube. Yes I am an idiot for actually buying into it, but it's not like I searched for it or anything to begin with.

I backed everything up and I might just reformat, but so far it doesn't seem to do much. Was running a little slower shortly after I downloaded it, then I got rid of a few files and tinkered with the registry a bit. There's still an annoying site redirector in my IE, and I know I haven't yet cleaned it out all the way. Hopefully they can't get to my personal stuff. Whatever happened to the funny viruses that used to like, change your wallpaper to weird stuff and what not? Share your virus experiences I guess (and if you can, help me with this one plz? :<). It's so crazy because this computer is only like a year and two months old, and this isn't even the first infection it's seen since then.

EDIT: So I ended up re-formatting after all... With LESS THAN the factory settings. My important stuff was backed up though, thank God. Now all I have to do is re-install my programs. Also, for some reason I no longer has Windows Aero.

This post has been edited by Dr. BaconStein: 12 November 2009 - 08:44 PM

[???????]

With the new IPB's wonky "View New Content" feature not showing this topic, I missed this until just now.

I need to buy an external HDD or two that holds more than just 30 gigs. I haven't backed up anything on either of my first internal HDD at all in the past year and few months that I've had it.

I had a pretty bad experience with a virus way back when I had to share a computer with 4 other people, being my family. Well, actually 3, since I'm sure my older brother had his own by that point. My older brother always knew what he was doing and my dad didn't seem like the type to do anything to get viruses onto the computer, but I'm still not ruling him out as a possible suspect. It could've even been me in a moment of weakness. While I suspect my mother could've done it, my younger, idiotic brother was my prime suspect.

Anyway, I don't think we had any anti-virus or anti-adware software running, the virus disabled those programs, or they were unable to remove the viruses. It made some things go haywire and popups kept coming up. I don't know how long it took me to come to the conclusion I did, but I ended up having to disconnect the PC from the internet. Next, I opened up the Task Manager and tried to close the program, but it kept starting up again. I think I was told constantly where the program was hidden by my PC. When I found and tried to delete it, I couldn't because the process was still running. Eventually, I had to go the process and kill the one that kept reappearing every time time I closed the program. Problem was that another process kept bringing that one back. In fact, I think it may have been more than one. I don't remember how I figured out which ones were doing this, but I think they all had similar names to eachother and the original process I was trying to kill. Problem is that they also had names similar to legit processes. After a while, I found the right processes (and I think I may have killed off any others linked to them through removal of process trees) and promptly proceeded to permanently delete the programs that stole my evening from me.

This happened when I was still in middle school, so I may have forgotten or made up a little by accident, but I'm sure that the majority, if not all, of that happened that way. It caused a lot of stress for me at the time, but, I believe it may have given me some kind of ego boost back then. I do know that I enjoyed working on it a little, though.

[Kvitne]

My job is having fun with viruses. Thus why I hate PCs.

BaconStein, the lack of Aero means you probably don't have the right video driver installed. I'd check that out if I were you.

[???????]

Isn't this more of an OS problem than a PC problem and aren't Macs PCs themselves?

[Kvitne]

Yeah, if you want to be a technical douche about it.

[Dr. BaconStein]

Kvitne, on 19 November 2009 - 02:11 PM, said:

BaconStein, the lack of Aero means you probably don't have the right video driver installed. I'd check that out if I were you.

Oh I already found out that I accidentally loaded the Vista Home Basic disc instead of the Vista Home Premium disc. That was my stupid mistake, but I can always fix it. :V

This post has been edited by Dr. BaconStein: 20 November 2009 - 03:52 AM

[Season-Shifter]

Dr. BaconStein, on 19 November 2009 - 10:51 PM, said:

Oh I already found out that I accidentally loaded the Vista Home Basic disc instead of the Vista Home Premium disc. That was my stupid mistake, but I can always fix it. :V

#When did you first know that you accidentally loaded the vista home
basic disc instead of the vista home premium disc?
#Does it bother you that you accidentally loaded the vista home basic
disc instead of the vista home premium disc?
#Is it because you accidentally loaded the vista home basic disc
instead of the vista home premium disc that you came to me?
#Does it bother you that you accidentally loaded the vista home basic disc instead of the vista home premium disc that you accidentally loaded the vista home premium disc that you accidentally loaded the vista home basic disc instead of the vista home basic disc instead of the vista home basic disc instead of the vista home basic disc instead of the vista home premium disc?
#Does it bother you that you came to me?

[NiGHTS Noob]

I have a funky possible virus issue of my own right now that I want to know if anyone knows anything about. Every time I restart my computer I get a few good days of working fine, then several days where everything works, but I can't open up Microsoft office applications more than once (after I close them the first time it claims there isn't enough disc space to open them again), and I can't access anything in my start menu (it shows up, but I can't click on anything and nothing turns gray to show my mouse is on it), and then a few days later I get a bunch of registry errors about how the "parameter is incorrect" or something to that extent at which point I need to restart my computer because nothing renders right.

Does anyone know anything about this? Anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-malware, anti-trojan, and anti-rootkit applications can't find it as of now so I don't know what it could possibly be. I really hope it isn't a boot virus or hardware malfunction of some sort.

EDIT: Some quick Google searching leads me to believe it's a failing external hard drive. Gotta install that manager software shit and run it again. If I got to buy a new one I'm going Western Digital this time. Maxtor may be cheap, but apparently this isn't a rare error I'm getting.

This post has been edited by NiGHTS Noob: 30 November 2009 - 01:38 AM

[???????]

I really don't know if this will help in any way, but you said that there are some registry errors, so maybe you could try some registry cleaners. When I learned that I may have had some registry problems, I downloaded and ran Little Registry Cleaner. I was surprised to see just how many registry errors I apparently had and I think some problems I was experiencing at the time went away once this program fixed them.

[NiGHTS Noob]

Nice, it said it caught over 90 registry errors that I had. Hopefully that will clear some of this stuff up because Maxtor manager said the drive wasn't having any problems. We'll wait and see though.

[Sway]

A "messy" registry doesn't really matter.

[NiGHTS Noob]

Well, what will it do? I'm sure it does something not good, like slowing down your computer at the least.

[Sway]

Nope.

[???????]

You sure? Registry errors do something negative, I know that much. I also think my PC has become faster after fixing the many registry errors I had, which I believe were way more numerous than what NN had.

[Sway]

They "do something negative," huh? I think you should read what you're writing before you ask me if I'm sure, because it sounds like you don't know exactly why you're doing it other than for organization/"keeping things clean." Windows can load all your extra registry keys in nanoseconds. You get maybe a .0001% faster startup, and perhaps free up a few bytes of RAM depending, but probably not. Any difference you saw in performance was imagined. There are no tests out there proving a performance boost. Generally it doesn't hurt anything, but cleaners can get rid of something important accidentally. You're wasting your time and I'm absolutely sure of this.

[???????]

Gee, someone sounds offended for no good reason. I'm "wasting my time"? I was asking you a question about how they affect a PC, not trying to argue with you. Reason I said I'm sure is because people keep suggesting that registry errors can be the cause of problems and I have a somewhat hard time believing that people would suggest that if it weren't true. Notice how I said "I think" when describing what happened after running a cleaner rather than saying that I was positive.

[Sway]

Whoa whoa whoa, I'm not offended, I'm just trying to correct you in no uncertain terms, since it seems like you still don't quite buy it and are not willing to do even a simple Google search for "registry cleaner necessary" or something. You said you "know" they "do something negative," and I'm not going to humor that and pretend that hazy, half-researched tidbit is actually the case. Just because you think something and aren't totally sure doesn't mean I can't tell you you're wrong. People who say that cleaning the registry does something either have a product to peddle or don't really know how Windows works and just parrot misinformation. You go ahead and do what you like; cleaning the registry is usually not harmful, and it can give you a nice feeling, like you're keeping things humming. But let's not pretend it's not a waste of time.

[KennEH!]

I disagree with you on the point that my father and my many experiences with computers I've had cleaning through registry does tons for speeding up start up. Also it can leave a computer more vulnerable to crashes. Though this is dependent on what the errors are.

This post has been edited by KennEH!: 01 December 2009 - 09:36 PM

[NiGHTS Noob]

Well, I went and did a little bit of research. From what I can tell, cleaning a messy registry does next to nothing and is absolutely bullshit, but registry errors are one of the two main causes of crashes, so fixing a registry is a different story. I ended up downloading a different registry thing soon after I ran the one Marx posted. As far as I can tell right now my problems have been completely eliminated, so it might have been a registry error after all. A bad DLL or something maybe. All my stuff still works though, including Media Center which is one of the big things prone to getting deleted if you're using XP Media Center Edition, so I think I'm probably good to go.

[???????]

Huh, I always thought that cleaning the registry and fixing the registry were synonymous with eachother. What NN stated about registry errors are what I read about before I first decided to download a program to correct the registry problems.