Slowdowns, Adware, BSOD on a "clean" xp install - where do I start?

I'm not sure where to start.

I have 3 networked home PC's. My personal (main) PC started to get BSOD at least daily. I decided to reformat and reinstall everything since I believe this to be good housekeeping at least yearly. Anyhow, after reinstalling, I got frequent slowdowns. I also had problems running Zonealarm 6 (true vector shutdowns and Trend PC Cilling shutdown). I have now settled on AVG and zonealarm 5.5. My computers are also behind a router/firewall.

I took precautions and scanned with ewido, adware se, spybot and trend housecall. I cleaned out all the tracking cookies out but noticed that Housecall was also identifying ADW_SE and TRAK_SE as malware/greyware. A google on this got quite a few hits but no specific confirmation on whether these were a threat.

Also, I noticed processes such as svchost and spoolsv we sometimes taking up 99% of CPU resource, virtually locking up my computer (which is an Athlon 64 3000+ so it should be pretty fast). Also, downloads from the web and files transferred between my PC's were frequently being reported as corrupt, and some installation programs would hang.

Since this was a fresh install I was confused. At this stage a really dont know whether I have a software issue; driver issue; hardware issue, or if something on my own network keeps re-infecting me.

So I decided to go through the same scanning routine using ewido, adware se, spybot and trend housecall on all 3 PC's, fixing everything that was found except for ADW_SE and TRAK_SE. Another puzzling thing is that on one of my PC's trend housecall wouldnt even run.

I have a hijack this log for the 2 PC's - should I post them, or troubleshoot other things first?

 

Hello, HJT logs are not allowed here at Wilders but u could post them over at this forum,

http://gladiator-antivirus.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=10517

to at least eliminate the possible malware issue first.



snowbound

 

Thanks - I'll try those first

 

Although Wilders doesn't do HJT logs, we can always address the other things. First, how many times have you formatted? If just once, you might try again. I've had several times where something just didn't get installed right, and ended up with the same symptoms you have.. some services chewing up tons of CPU for no discernable reason. Another reformat did the trick (I've troubleshooted it down a couple times, but honestly it was just faster and more worth it to just format again). After that you might try some hardware tests, such as checking your hard drive and RAM for errors. To check your drive, just go into My Computer, right click on your C:, go to the Tools tab, and do the error checking from there. To check your RAM, download memtest86+, burn it to CD, and boot from that CD. Let it go for at least a couple hours. I don't really suspect your RAM, but it's always best to rule such things out, plus it's good "housekeeping"

 

I have reformatted twice.

Personally I think it may be related to one of two things:
1) the latest MSI nForce 4 drivers 666 (which I dont think are WHQL certified) or
2) a faulty NIC on the 2nd PC where I store a lot of my drivers for backup purposes. I replaced its NIC card this morning after a lot of Trend Housecall, Java download errors.

 

My experience with re-installing winXPproSP2 on my new computer is that the second re-install was striking shorter in time and yes I didn't run a low-level format on my harddisk before the re-install.
I didn't have any troubles, because my new computer was never connected to the internet, but the shorter re-install worried me nevertheless.
I think that some install steps are shorter, because it uses the existing data on the harddisk of the previous install.
Next time I will run a low-level format first to get the same re-install as the first install.

 

You might try getting the latest off the nVidia website, then. The latest appear to be 6.7, and are WHQL certified.

 

I'll probably start off with the drivers supplied with the motherbord cd, back that up and then try the nVidia drivers.

Another thought - do you think all the download errors could be a faulty router. The reason I ask is that I've had to reset it a number of times about a month ago when it kept losing connection. Just wondering if there is a potential issue when downloading that corrupts files?

 

That very well could be. To test the idea, you could just plug the modem directly into your computer.

 

Hi Roland6543,

The nForce4 IDE drivers could also be contributing to your problems. The have a reputation for being buggy. They are not usable yet on one of my nForce4 boards (ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe). One obvious symptom is plenty of these in your event logs > Event ID: 51...An error was detected on device <device path> during a paging operation. You can uninstall the IDE drivers via Add or Remove Programs. Windows will install its own default driver after a reboot.

Nick

 

That could be it.

First - here ould I find the event log?

Second - are the nForce IDE drivers used for SATA drives too?

 

1. You can view event logs by going to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Event Viewer. Those errors will show up in your System event log. Event logs, in general, are worth keeping an eye on .

2. The nForce4 drivers do cover SATA drives (my nForce4 desktops only have SATA drives). Another nForce4 driver suggestion would be to uninstall the nForce4 firewall driver if you plan on running another software firewall like ZA or, in my case, Outpost Pro. You will likely see instability if you don't.

Hope that helps,

Nick

 

Hello,
Yes, don't use that nVidia firewall. It will eat your paging file and bsod you once in a while.
Mrk