windows XP hardware failure

[flaninacupboard]

twice while browsing vhelp my system has locked, then come back to life in 640x480 16 colours, and told me it's recovered from a device failure - please restart. after restarting i get this message up. i checked the file it mentions but don't know what format/viewer i should be using.


this time my firewall also warned me wmplayer has been replaced - i guess spyware but spybot s&d finds nothing..... anyone got a clue?[/img]

[tekkieman]

Either Internet Explorer or notepad will read the system.xml file.

Bad day for computers. My home rig has a backdoor trojan I can't get rid of, and my start page has been hijacked! AV can't delete the trojan file, and if I reboot in safe mode, I can't find the file. Still trying to get it running again.

Let's see what the xml file says, and see if we can't get you working again!

[flaninacupboard]

the xml file seems to be just a big long list of the drivers i have installed.

I thought maybe it's my gfx card playing up as it resorted to ugly vga mode, but not sure if it would do that anyway with an error. funnily enough i was burning a disc during the crash - and it came out fine!

[tekkieman]

You're still posting a lot.... Are you still in VGA mode? That would suck!

Have you tried reinstalling the drivers for the video card?

[flaninacupboard]

no i'm back on 1024x768, it went to vga after the lockup gave the "device failure" message, i waited for my burn to finish and then restarted, got the message I screen grabbed, but everything seems to be working ok....

[tekkieman]

no i'm back on 1024x768, it went to vga after the lockup gave the "device failure" message, i waited for my burn to finish and then restarted, got the message I screen grabbed, but everything seems to be working ok....

Not if you keep going and checking out pages that crash your browser......


edit - Talk about a cross-thread!

[flaninacupboard]

yeah, sometimes i confuse myself!!

[DVD_Ripper]

Either Internet Explorer or notepad will read the system.xml file.

Bad day for computers. My home rig has a backdoor trojan I can't get rid of, and my start page has been hijacked! AV can't delete the trojan file, and if I reboot in safe mode, I can't find the file. Still trying to get it running again.

Let's see what the xml file says, and see if we can't get you working again!

I would look at your msconfig file to see what apps are set to run at startup and then check them against
http://www.windowsstartup.com/wso/ to see if any are flagged as suspcious.

Two weeks ago... with Kerio, Norton and checks with two spy checking apps I got hit... not notepad app got 'replaced'. Nasty until I had checked and noticed a wierdity in my startup files.

[flaninacupboard]

thanks for the tip, very useful website!
sadly no answers there though - all my startup processes are ok.

[tekkieman]

Either Internet Explorer or notepad will read the system.xml file.

Bad day for computers. My home rig has a backdoor trojan I can't get rid of, and my start page has been hijacked! AV can't delete the trojan file, and if I reboot in safe mode, I can't find the file. Still trying to get it running again.

Let's see what the xml file says, and see if we can't get you working again!

I would look at your msconfig file to see what apps are set to run at startup and then check them against
http://www.windowsstartup.com/wso/ to see if any are flagged as suspcious.

Two weeks ago... with Kerio, Norton and checks with two spy checking apps I got hit... not notepad app got 'replaced'. Nasty until I had checked and noticed a wierdity in my startup files.

Thanks. First place I looked. Got rid of the only offender there. You know it's a bad sign when you have a process running named "1". Weird thing is that I see the offending trojan file, until I reboot in safe mode as administrator, then it's gone. Still a lot to do before I consider the "format c: /y" (even if that command doesn't work!)

[stiltman]

look here for stuff too
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Runonce

[flaninacupboard]

nope, just MSN messenger...

[tekkieman]

look here for stuff too
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Run
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Runonce

Yep, cleaned those out already too! Still have my problem.

@flan - I'm not hijacking your thread - yet. After tonights session, if I still can't fix it, I might open my own thread.