[periwinkle]

This really freaked me out!!! I was innocently playing Solitaire on my favorite game site, when all of a sudden the screen went black. At first I thought it was a power outtage, since that does happen once in a great while in my neighborhood. But then, the Big E appeared, and I could see that my computer was rebooting all of a sudden, for no reason at all. It has never just quit and restarted like that! It is 2 years and 1 month old. I have 512 MB of RAM. After the Big E appeared, then the screen was black with white letters, as if the computer was in DOS. (I guess it was.) It kept saying Disk Boot Failure when I hit return. So, I shut off the power strip, since I couldn't shut it off the normal way. I waited about 5 minutes, turned it back on, and then chkdsk started running automatically. I wondered how long this was going to take, so I walked away and did some other things for about 10 minutes. I came back, and everything looked normal - it had rebooted successfully.

I'm freaked out about why it would suddenly try to reboot, when I wasn't receiving any Windows Updates or doing anything at all out of the ordinary. I had 3-4 windows open. My system wasn't hung (like it used to do in the past) before I discovered Antispyware scans and TuneUp. Also, I have been using TuneUp successfully for the last 6 weeks, and I really like it! I have cleaned up the hard drive a few times and cleaned up the registry also. I just ran an Antivirus check (my Norton) yesterday and found nothing. I ran a Trend spyware check Saturday, and found about 11 of the usual ad cookies and got rid of them. I ran AdAdware just an hour before this weird crash happened. Nothing worrisome was found by AdAware.

What else can I do to ensure this doesn't happen again and find out why this happened?

[Advertisements]

I am currently running a Panda online virus scan, and already it has found Spyware and "hacking tools/potentially unwanted tools"...

[periwinkle]

I am currently running a Panda online virus scan, and already it has found Spyware and "hacking tools/potentially unwanted tools"...

[gerryf]

start > run, type
eventvwr.msc
<enter>

Look under systems and applications for items with red Xs that happened at the SAME time as your problem...list them here.

[periwinkle]

Hi Gerry,

I ran the event viewer, and saw that Service Control Manager was listed as an error 4 times at 11:46:41 and the event was 7001, 7000, 7000 and 7023. The next error was show at 11:30, and had the same 4 events listed as previous. I believe that this is when my computer screen went black. Then it goes back to 9:20, and the same 4 events are listed. I believe that this is when I first turned on the computer. I didn't notice anything to indicate that there were any errors.

After running the Panda AV scan, I found 11 spywares, one of which is in the windows registry and 2 potential hacking tools. All this, after running AdAware last night! I just started AdAware again because, unfortunately, Panda does not clean these off. AdAware had an update, so maybe several of those items will be cleansed. I wonder if I can get rid of these cookies by emptying the Internet Explorer cache of all cookies?

[periwinkle]

AdAware finished and found nothing malicious. I cleaned two non-threatening items out. I will try Trend Micro online Antispyware scan next.

[gerryf]

Please go to the malware forum and follow the instructions at the top....Especially the CLICK HERE .

That will give you several steps that will help you clean up 70 percent of all problems by yourself. If at the end of the process you are still having difficulty--and you may not be-- then post a hijackthis log in THAT forum.

If you are still having problems after getting a clean bill of health from the malware expert, please return to this thread.

[periwinkle]

Hi Gerry,

I downloaded a lot of the recommended AntiSpyware programs and I've run several of them. I couldn't figure out how to install IE-Spyad. I tried unzipping the files, and it seemed to work, but I could never find the exe file. However, I now have an arsenal of protection from the recommended AntiSpywares on Geeks to Go.

Now I have a new problem. I think I changed something on my system in one of the applications, and I seem to have lost my administrator controls!!! I can't get into the Internet Options in IE, and this has never happened before! Not only that, but I can't find the administrator control anymore. This is scaring me. Maybe I'm just getting too excited, but I don't know how to log in as the administrator (I own this computer), unless I start in Safe Mode. What can I do besides starting in Safe Mode?