Re: Sudden freezes, and bits missing

In news:C28F3FDB-B9F4-4FD8-B5B6-867F3896ED1F@xxxxxxxxxxxxx,
Tim <Tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> had this to say:

My reply is at the bottom of your sent message:

> I will try this, thanks Galen. I am fully firewalled and so on with
> McAffey Security, but have always had my suspicions that it misses
> spyware, as it rarely updates the spyware definitions.

In that case I'd definately take a look for potential spyware issues. Have
you noticed any odd tasks running? Complex malware is capable of running
hidden from view or even bonding with a system file such as explorer.exe
making it hard to detect and the problems that you're relating are
potentially due to something of that sort. Another idea could be that things
have just finally become corrupted and you may simply need to run sfc
/scannow to replace any corrupted files from the system.

Are these problems suddenly occuring? McAfee recently had a problem with one
of it's updates. That could be an issue. Does the problem still occur if
McAfee is shut down? Are you doing anything specific when this happens? In
other words, can you recreate this at will?

It has also occured to me that when you're pressing the Start button (no
lie, I was recently asked where the start button was while in the Microsoft
chat) you mentioned that it's crashing. In other words explorer.exe is
forced to close and re-opens itself. Is there anything written to the event
log after this? I've usually set my PC up to run the desktop explorer as a
separate process and that's often been a great help for such things. The
additional resource usage is minimal (around 8 MB or so I think) and the
benefits are worth it. If you want to try it then this would be the method:


1.. Open the registry editor (Start > Run > type "regedit" without the
quotes > press Enter or click okay)
2.. Navigate to
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer.
3.. From the Edit menu, select New-DWORD Value.
4.. Enter a name of DesktopProcess, and press Enter.
5.. Double-click the new value, set it to 1, and click OK.
6.. Restart your computer.
Keep in mind that editing the registry is considered dangerous and could
have negative results.

Galen
--

"My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me
the most abstruse cryptogram or the most intricate analysis, and I am
in my own proper atmosphere. I can dispense then with artificial
stimulants. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for
mental exaltation." -- Sherlock Holmes


.