Help...strange crash

[batman62788]

MY PC CRASHES. This is very annoying. A while back I had a pc crash when i played a computer game. the first crash would be 30 minutes into game...the next would be almost immediate if i were to reboot the pc and play again. This was last year. so i removed a ram stick(had 2) and it worked...no crashes for a long time. then few months ago i started getting one here or there...then more and more...and then more...now it even crashes when im on my desktop or something. the crash is something like...the pc sounding like there was a power outage where it looks and sounds like it cut off...but then after the monitor is black, it restores itself to the last image i saw before the crash and its frozen.

So i bought another ram stick...and now it crashes still, and when it crashes this time, i see a blur of colors and static with the last image i saw(like a website i was on right before the crash). Its annoying. I spent 80 dollars on this ram. So i changed ram slots, no help. I have 3 ram slots, one slot is messed up.

The idiots at HP built the floppy disk drive RIGHT over it...i have to push the thing up real hard to slide the ram stick in the third slot only to find the slot is messed up(the divider is not positioned right so the little black piece that goes into the cut in the ram stick its a little off the side so the ram stick doesnt fit in without a lot of force and then just beeps when u turn the pc on). So I don't know what to do.

I do have a worm on my pc, had it for a while. It infects all my .exe and .scr files. It doesnt do much...it was quiet for a while until i use a virus scaner(housecall.trendmicro.com) and when it cleaned the files, it corrupted all my .exes and made backups so i had to rename the backups back to the .exe and delete the corrupt ones. But now, i cant run some exes because they seem to get reinfected after use. Like for instance, i play a pc game called mafia. If i double click now, it wont run. so i have to go to disk 2 of the game and copy the game.exe and put it in the folder of mafia and replace the old one. And if i dont play it for a while, it becomes infected again anbd doesnt run. This worm is called pate.b.worm. I can't seem to get rid of it. Its probably in my system restore and the morons at hp didnt give me a restore disk so I cant get rid of it...i cant even make backups of my registry on hp. But i don't think the virus is causing this crash because the problem was fixed for a while when i removed that one ram stick.

i have xp home edition...32 mb video card(on board)..1.67 ghz

 

[ImpetusEra]

Format and reinstall operating system. Remove the drive to get better access to the RAM slots and make sure the ram is properly seated in the correct orientation.

 

[bcastner]

I would do a very clean install.

Download from the manufacturer of your hard disk drive their free diagnostic and setup program.

Use this to do a low-level or thorough reformat of the drive, both to check for drive errors and to remove possible boot-sector viri.

Do a clean install of the OS, enable a firewall, and then head to the Windows Update site to get current.

Then re-do your applications.

 

[ImpetusEra]

fdisk /mbr would probably be sufficient for nuking boot sector virus.

 

[AnalogAnomaly]

Fresh clean full install isn't too much of an option with hewlett Packard computers. Yes they're tight inside, a real pain to repair. It seems you have to pull out half of the machine just to get to one small item like say a jumper. I hate hewlett packards because I repair a lot of them. Aside from using propritary parts(namely power supplies) and making the cases a pain to service, they don't give you an installation disc for your operating system. Instead they give you recovery discs that wipe whatever data you have on the machine and restore the OS to factory defaults complete with the crappy third party software they bundle with it. So not only can you not install on a new or replacement hard drive without purchasing another copy of windows. you have to have some means of backing up your data because you can't just install over your os to see if that fixes anything.(though that's generally not the reccomend course of action and i do encourage frequent backups regardless.) Some HP's will allow you to run the restore without a disc, this is because the files needed are stored locally and there's a bootup hotkey for the quick-restore function if your particular model supports this. As for your anti-virus. If i recall housecall.trendmicro.com (which i didn't go to, i'm just going off of memory here so if i'm wrong you know why) is Trend Micro's PC-CIllin.. which, in all honesty, is a pice of crap. I reccomend F-Secure, Kapersky Labs, Bit Defender (which made by programmers who made kasperky labs, but they left because management changed and new management wanted them to do things differently. Honestly i'd rather go with bit defender which i belive has a new name now.. v-something.. as I hold a lot more faith in fellow programmers than I do management.) F-secure can be purchased online and is really one of the best. It makes norton look stupid. And of course AVG and McAffee are horrendously worse than even norton. Whichever route you think suits you best. you can save data, and run a recovery or get a decent anti-virus. Also, if you haven't already I personally recommend getting spybot search and destroy and adaware 6, both of which are free to download and use. They won't help you with Virii but they're great for getting rid of and protecting against spyware. I run spybot search and destroy which gets the bulk of it and then i run adaware to clean up anything spybot leaves behind. Generally though spybot only leaves behind cookies. I'd have to say that the most virii and spyware i've removed from a computer was a dell that had an expired version of norton on it. It had 49,312 infected files (not counting the 672 spyware apps running). I managed to remove all of the virii and spyware and nurse the operating system back to health without formatting and reloading. This was done with f-secure and spybot, some manual removal was of course necearry and i did some registry editing and other things to clean up the system. As for testing ram, download and burn, or have a friend download and burn gnoppix(basiclly knoppix only running gnome instead of KDE), boot the the gnoppix cd and instead of running linux just chose the ramtest. This should of course be done after all the id-10-t errors are checked for. IE make sure everything is properly seated in the machine, that all the cables are intact and plugged in properly, make sure everything is jumpered correctly, check for blown, bulding, encrusted, or oozing capacitors, etc. You know the drill.

Sorry. Went on a bit of a rant there. :/
My apologies, i'm too lazy to go back and edit it.

 

[bcastner]

ImpetisEra,

fdisk /mbr is not a native XP command.
MSFT notes reservations on using older DOS boot disks with FDISK, or the XP equivalent for cases of boot sector viri:

FIXMBR
fixmbr device name

Use this command to repair the master boot record (MBR) of the boot partition. In the command syntax, device name is an optional device name that specifies the device that needs a new MBR. Use this command if a virus has damaged the MBR and Windows cannot start.

WARNING: This command can damage your partition tables if a virus is present or a hardware problem exists. Using this command can cause inaccessible partitions. Microsoft recommends that you run antivirus software before you use this command.

I hold with my advice above.