Help!! Vista suddenly goes crazy!
Posted by admin on Jan 26th, 2007
Hi all,This morning my goodrunning Vista crashed suddenly and restarted itself automatically. After that, my Vista is now behaves like crazy and weird!The problems are:1) If I double click folder in Explorer, it now Open to New Window. The option is currently set to "Open in same window". I really hate it to Open the folder to New Window, how do I stop this?2) IE7 suddenly can't open in New Window. When I right click to a link then click "Open in New Window", it just sits there, nothing happened. Same thing if we used window.open javascript. Looks like IE7 suddenly corrupted or kind of that, but I can browse and Open in new Tab without problem. Any ideas?3) Many shortcuts suddenly can't be opened. Usually I can double click to open jpg, gif or png picture. Now double click on them won't do anything. Weird!4) If I right click on the image, there are two "Preview" menu items. One with bold, one without. Both of them didn't work as well. (This might related to #3).5) If I clicked on the "picture slideshow" in the SideBar, usually it will open the Photo Gallery Viewer automatically. Now it said, "No such interface supported".Please note that all of these problems appear suddenly this morning! I didn't install or configure anything prior to it!Please help! What should I do now to get back to my good running Vista? I certainly dont want to reinstall because I have many development applications installed.I found more problems.The standard commands for builtin supported extensions now no longer work as well. For example, previously if I currently selected on a zip file, the "Extract All Files" command will appear in the toolbar. Now, it just has "Open" option, and the sub options only contain "Internet Explorer". Is Vista going crazy? Opening a zip file with "Internet Explorer"? Hmm...I think I just need to reset the shell extensions/builtin commands to the Vista default, or kind of that. I just need to do how to do the tasks without has to perform reinstallation. Thanks.Read the discussion in another forum: https://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1328814&SiteID=17Regards, James.
Jan 27th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
You don't really need to protect the Internet from your computer by blocking outgoing traffic. If you're doing this to try to detect malware that's already infected your computer, chances of that working are slim to none. So you might consider just leaving the firewall asis. I've used the builtin firewall with the default settings since it was the ICF in the first release of Windows XP and I've never had a single firewallrelated security breach. Most that stuff about blocking outgoing ports if bs written my marketing people who know nothing about computer security just trying to convince you to buy a product you don't really need.By the way, I teach computer security at the college level. So it's not like I'm just making this up. Search anything about this topic not written by matketing people trying to sell you a product (or people who got their education from those people) and you'll see. The real pros look at outgoing port blocking as a means of "after the infection malware protection" as a total joke."James"
Feb 1st, 2007 at 07:26 pm
Disregard that preceding reply. Was supposed to go with a different post."James"
Feb 4th, 2007 at 05:25 pm
Have you tried running System Restore? Paul Smith, Yeovil, UK. Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User. windowsresource.net/*Remove nospam. to reply by email* "James"
Feb 5th, 2007 at 08:17 am
Paul,No, I can't run System Restore because I don't enable it. My C Drive is running low so it is disabled automatically I guess.Any ideas? "Paul Smith" wrote:
Feb 9th, 2007 at 11:20 pm
Hi, James. This sound very familiar to me. I had the same problem on my previous laptop with XPH. I do not know if my suggestions will help you on the Vista platform, but here is what I did. First I downloaded and installed a brand new antivirus software. I used AVGantivirus FREE edition (www.free.grisoft.com) After this i run Spybot Search and Desreoy (spybot.info/). In addition I ran the AdAware from Lavasoft. (lavasoft.de/products/adaware_se_personal.php).This recepie found to trojan viruses, 150 items of spyware/malware. The AdAware found a couple of more spys that the S&D didnt find. I ran them several times just to be sure.In the end my XPP returned to "normal"If this does not help at all, you might consider that some of your hardware is beginning to fail. Possible RAM, prosessor or some other card. It is a longshot but regulary run some antivirus and antispyware program prevents the PC to go on a roadtrip... :)Good luck!!"James" wrote:
Feb 14th, 2007 at 03:52 am
Hi Newton,My Windows Defender is active and reported that it is running normally. It never found any kind of trojans or spy/malware before.However, I will give AVG anti virus a try.Thanks, James."Newton Tech" wrote:
Feb 19th, 2007 at 06:40 am
Hi. Yes. Defender is a great tool, but not always 100%. It is recomended that you use several spyware programs just to be sure.... Just humor me and try spybot and AdAware....."James" wrote:
Feb 22nd, 2007 at 09:00 pm
Hi Newton,Ok, I installed both of the programs you mentioned. Run them. The spybot did detect some issues but all of them are only cookies related. Ok, I fixed them all. The same thing goes to the ad aware.However, it didn't fix the problem. Any other ideas? "Newton Tech" wrote:
Feb 26th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Why did it do that? was there a mains power glitch? were you online at the time, or WiFiexposed? what apps were running? what were you doing?Kill "Automatically Restart on System Errors" at birth it's a really dumb duuuuhfault that just hides what you need to know and forces the OS to attempt to startup straight after something knocked it down. At least then you can read and digiphoto any BSoD you get. Sounds like you have a barfed HKCR (H_KEY_CLASSES_ROOT) in your registry that is what defines file associations and CLSID shell integrations. This is in turn built up from a mix of systemside HKLM...Classes and peraccount HKCU...Classes, with an added Vista wrinkle that there may be virtualized "HKLM" settings as well.If you have a different user account, try that that will avoid the peraccount component of HKCR.At this point, I'd want to harvest backedup registry hives from System Restore points; you'd need a Bart CDR boot or similar nonHDbased boot to do that. Aside from a oneshot (Win95style) partial backup on boot, these SR copies are the only registry backups maintained by Vista. Crazy, but there you are... you may want to use ERUNT in future for this purpose (run as admin, set up as a Task) if running without SR on C: Step one is to determine why the PC crashed and ate the registry in the first place. See initial Qs... were you running something you were busy writing when it crashed? Still pointing to HKCR. Be easier to use! >
Mar 3rd, 2007 at 06:10 pm
On Mon, 12 Mar 2007 02:52:02 0700, Newton Tech ....and once you've formally excluded traditional "hard" malware, other good free "antispyware" scanners are ASquared and AVG AntiSpyware (formally Ewido, which was one of the best).If working from Bart as your formal scanning mOS, you can use... FProt CLI scanner McAfee CLI scanner * Sophos CLI scanner * KAV CLI scanner * Trend SysClean * ....as your "hard" malware scans from Bart, and these... AdAware Spybot ASquared ....via the RunScanner plugin. I've not been able to use AVG Antispyware from Bart boot, so I use that from Safe Cmd.* Easiest obtained and updated via Dave Lipman's MultiAV Be easier to use! >