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Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
 
One of our computers is messed up.

We recently installed Norton AV 2005 on it. There were some problems during the installation, it couldn't find a DLL that was indeed on the disc (Or rather, it appeared to be on the disc in Windows Explorer. Interestingly enough, we tried to open file in another program to see if it would generate the same File Not Found error, and it did. What's even stranger is that my father had used the same disc to install NAV on his computer with no difficulty). Anyway, my brother suggested that we click of "Ignore" whenever the installation reported that the file was "missing" (we were kinda desperate, since the install program had delteded NAV2004 during my first installation attempt, and the computer had been without protection for a few days now). Everything was fine-- except LiveUpdate. We scanned the computer, and found 115(!) threats and got rid of most of them.

The other night, I decided start a scan again before I went to bed. The next morning, it had discovered three files: two were deleted through Safe Mode; the third we had seen before and knew was more persistant, so we stuck in a DOS boot disk, restarted it, and fried it the old-fashioned way.

When we restarted the computer again, we had two problems. First, the computer couldn't access the internet at all, through ZoneAlarm, ping, or MSIE. All four computers get online through a router, and the rest (including this one) seem to be working fine. Second, the taskbar was frozen completely about 10 seconds after the computer started up. I can open other Windows Explorer windows, browse files, etc, but the taskbar remains stuck, and the Start menu can't be opened unless I clicked it during those first 10 seconds. If it was opened during that time, remains on the screen, with about the same amount of functionality as the background image.

System Restore has proved itself useless-- I ran it, and it'll reboot the computer, give a dialog during startup saying "Restoring files...", and then a window will come up saying System Restore could not restore the files. And, meanwhile, the taskbar will still be frozen. Restarting explorer.exe through the Task Manager hasn't helped. However, in Safe Mode, Explorer works fine-- internet's still gone, of course. I've tried four different restore points; I'll try the other four later, and I've since uninstalled Norton Antivirus.

Could it have been something I deleted with NAV? I'm typing this on my mom's machine, and the other computer is sitting back there right now, displaying the wrong time on the taskbar, and cut off from the web...

--j_k
 

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Posted by WheatPuppet (Member # 5142) on :
 
Sounds like a startup program got borked, to me.

When was the last time you reformatted your drive?
 

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Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
 
Here's the deal: you borked either your Windows install or a startup program. I suspect a combination of the two, actually.

At this point, especially since it sounds like your machine was filled with all kinds of pretty viruses and spybots, I'd recommend a fresh install of Windows; anything you fix now will never guarantee that you're back in pristine condition.
 

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Posted by James Tiberius Kirk (Member # 2832) on :
 
Thanks everyone I'm going to read through all this and see if anything works before reinstalling everything.

WheatPuppet: I've never formatted it-- If anyone's wondering, it's a Gateway, we got it back in 2000(or 2001 ?) with WinME. When some worm ate through both it and our HP two years ago, my Dad simply had them install WinXP.

quote:

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Problems:
--Trying to install Norton Antivirus 2005.
--It didnt work because it couldnt find a file that was clearly on its own disk.
--Feeling desperate because it uninstalled NAV2k4 in the process and cannont recover.
--After feeling pretty screwed you discover that internet doesnt work.
--System restore doesnt help at all.
--Explorer.exe freezes on boot and cannot be helped even when restarted through task manager.

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*grin* that sounds about right

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There are a few things that come to mind that may or may not help.
When I upgraded to 2005 I first ran the virus scan, spybot, adaware, and hyjackthis all with the most up to date definitions. After cleaning my system up the best I could I then installed 2005. Although this may not help you now, it may in the future.

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To put it simply; explorer is like an internet browser. If beyondunreal has been disabled or otherwise isnt working correctly, your internet browser will sit there for seconds, even minutes before it reports that your connection to the server has timed out. This is the same case with Explorer.exe. If a service that it relies on isnt functioning it will sit there until it does work. If MS was smart in it's coding then they would have set a "timed out" limit in the code. If they didnt then it is probably a resource that is required and otherwise cannot function with out.

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