General Music Chat

I would sooner think it is malware.. I had BSOD on my pervious computer and I would go to trend micro housecall and run a scan.. http://free.antivirus.com/us/


these people solved my BSOD problem by killing the malware.. these guys respond fast too unlike the others

http://forum.hijackthis.de

No ISP is gonna go in and repair your machine for you; they will only establish that you have connectivity @ the rate of your agreement. The only exception might be when the ISP supplies anti-malware protection--and if they guarantee you will never be attacked. I know of no ISP who would offer such a guarantee, but even if they did, they would expend their effort to show how you changed the settings and let an attacker through. Plausible deniability.

As far as corrupted files, again, it depends on what they are; I haven't seen the list, so I'm not gonna guess. If they are indeed OS files, did you use either shadow copy or system restore for that OS? Every Microsoft OS has one or the other--or both--built in. If you didn't use either, why not? After all, you have a 1T drive, certainly room enough to establish a maintenance partition. Corrupted OS files are usually an easy fix--assuming you had the OS configured correctly in the first place.

Nor do I see any evidence of a hardware issue; everything you've said suggests otherwise. In your orig. post you noted "Did all sorts of diagnostics, Checkdisk, malware/virus scans, Deleted all the crap stuff using CCleaner..." and apparently found no hw issues, nor is there anything new you've reported to suggest it. However, when you say "Last night I ran Super Antispyware on it, and it found 1600 Adware things (all in Google Chrome), and this morning it fired right up with no freezes..." that's pretty overwhelming evidence of a problem resulting from--and I hate to sound like a broken record--web code. Lessee here, who makes Chrome...oh, that's right. Get yourself some protection, like ABP or something similar, and you won't have that problem. Sure, Google will tell you using an ad blocker will result in the wrath of gawd, make your machine explode, force your wife to leave you, your kids to turn you in to the authorities, etc.--but what would you expect them to say? Google makes their money on targeted advertising, and you are the target. Go back and read my comments above; dunno how I can make it any clearer.

A computer is much like a car: your need to do PM and keep up with the regular maintenance schedule or it will perform horribly--if at all. Would you forgo oil changes, checking your tires, tune-ups, etc. on your car? Then why ignore normal maintenance on your computer? It's a machine, and it will only work as well as the maintenance practices used to maintain it.

I hadn't run Super Anti for 2 months because I've been scanning with Malwarebytes. All the adware was in the Chrome folders - I'm using Firefox regularly, with AdBlocker. Chrome would just stop with Adblocker on, that's why I had it shut off on that browser, which I was using when Firefox was acting up (some software my wife put on the puter). I've got all the google tracking stuff turned off for my accounts. I've got McAfee anti-virus and firewall software running all the time.
Dayne - no BSOD , just random total freezes.

We'll see how it does tonight when I turn it on.

...I've been scanning with Malwarebytes. All the adware was in the Chrome folders - I'm using Firefox regularly, with AdBlocker. Chrome would just stop with Adblocker on, that's why I had it shut off on that browser, which I was using when Firefox was acting up (some software my wife put on the puter).

Malwarebytes is an effective app, as long as it's regularly updated. I've never let Chrome install, mostly because it always tries to trick me. A few years ago I was installing some software that allows you to download youtube vids locally, and every time I tried, it tried to slip Chrome in, backdoor. Anytime something tries to install software by tricking me, I stop it; nothing good ever results from that. What you've told us is ample proof I was right.

Google's propensities are well known; they've had a number of legal challenges to their practices in the US (some recently, like the practice of modifying search results based on who pays them the most), and at one point, China blocked them at their routers (might still be the case, dunno). Whenever I use their search engine, I copy the URL and open it in a new, private window, and kill the browser process when I'm done. Watch what happens to the URL when you access a page directly from google search--you're redirected to Google first, then to wherever you wanted to go. And they plant cookies on your box that call other code, which has nothing to do w/ what you're doing. Advertisers eat that stuff up, pay a premium for it, and Page and Brin--two guys w/ PhDs in computer science from Stanford--get rich from it.

I use FF because it allows for the best control, altho some versions of FF are suspect (for example, FF 35 has a bug where you can't actually see real-time cookies--a serious flaw). If you're having a problem w/ it, check the add-ons, and if there's anything you don't recognize or know why it's there, whack it. Likewise in Add/Remove Programs in Windows. Anything you uninstall, be sure to whack the physical files, too. Run CCleaner to clean out the entries from the registry. Work it out w/ your wife/kids that nothing gets installed unless they talk to you first. Maybe a bit dictatorial, but I made some serious $$ on the side, fixing machines where folks had software and they didn't know how it got there. Or more often, they went to a website that planted some code on their box. You were quoted $200 for a fix, right?

Chrome would just stop with Adblocker on, that's why I had it shut off on that browser...

Google will tell you using an ad blocker will result in the wrath of gawd, make your machine explode, force your wife to leave you, your kids to turn you in to the authorities...

...or just stop you from browsing until you capitulate.

Google makes their money on targeted advertising, and you are the target.

Now you know why Google tries to trick folks into installing Chrome; use it and they can force you to turn off anything that blocks the ads. Someone holds a gun to your head, you'll do what they want. That's why Google stock is so valuable.

Yesterday morning, no problems. Last night, had to cold reboot a few times, one time the computer even did it itself, it did another Chkdsk, found no issues.. Once it started running without freezing, it was fine for the rest of the evening. This morning, same thing a couple of cold reboots needed.
I can get a 'refurbished' (90 day warranty, can extend to 2-3years for $14-23) HP tower with 8G RAM, 2 TB hard drive for under $200 with WIn10 installed. Seems like a no-brainer, no? I've had brand new Dells fail in 3 years, other brands in 3-4 years, the fact this HP has lasted as long as it has is a miracle to me!

I can get a 'refurbished' (90 day warranty, can extend to 2-3years for $14-23) HP tower with 8G RAM, 2 TB hard drive for under $200 with WIn10 installed.

The hardware--assuming it's decent--sounds good; what video card does it have? What version of Win10? Home or Pro? Is this something local to you or something you found on the web? If it's on the web, can you post the URL? Less than $200 is def. cheap enough--don't care that it's refurbished--and I could use another box for my TV for sports and streaming, assuming it has a good video card and Win10 Pro. Let me know.

Not sure about the video card. Will see how it does with videoprocessing, I don't do any gaming. Win 10 Home. Pulled the trigger on this one:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Refurbished-HP-7900-SFF-Desktop-PC-with-Intel-Core-2-Duo-E8400-Processor-8GB-Memory-2TB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-10-Home-Monitor-Not-Included/54290630
$28 to add 4 year complete warranty - ANYTHING goes wrong with it, they pay to ship it back and repair/replace.
I will pick it up at local Walmart (New Hampshire, no sales tax) next week. If it isn't working when I get it home, just go right back to the Walmart for a refund. $185 total, can't beat that.

Looks decent--surely worth the price--but I do need the 'Pro' level OS; everything here is networked, and there's a standalone 2TB drive that has movies, old football games, cartoons, music vids, etc. that is accessible from anywhere in the house. W/ the 'Home' OS, there's no networking, no ability to set access rights, etc.

After I read your prev. post, I did go out and look for refurbished machines, and there are quite a few available. Guess they'll try to sell anything these days, given the huge drop in the PC market. General price range was $125 - $500, depending on what it is (and who the retailer is). All the 'Pro' level I saw were Win7, but that's fine for me. They usually don't specify on the vid card, but that can always be upgraded. Like you, I'm not a gamer, but I am a college football junkie (2 more days--woohoo!!) and watch the cable channels via off-shore streams. A better card means a better picture and less latency.

Hope the new box works out well for you...

Btw, Mike, from what you say, it sounds like the old box is running somewhat better now that you've dealt w/ google, but 1 thing I forgot to mention: you should run the defrag utility in Win. Files are allocated disk space in a chaotic process (think of a kid's cluttered bedroom), and the more fragmented they are, the longer it takes to search the drive...which leads to overall slower performance and sometimes, lock-ups. Yeah, it takes a while to run it--esp. on a 1TB drive--and the machine is effectively useless during that time, but you'll notice the diff., esp. if you haven't run it on that drive. I usually run it on mine once a year or so--yet another example of PM. Give it a try and see what you get.

Good idea, with all the deleting I've done, it's time for a Defrag session. I deleted close to 200GB of videos from the hard drive (still have them on backup drives, of course) so that System Restore would work correctly.