Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Hardware/Software - Two Problems and a Question
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HyperLamer
Posts: 2833/8210 |
Repair should do it, but I've seen some problems live through that. I didn't re-install to fix those bugs, I just wanted to have Windoze installed on the new HD, since it's bigger and apparently much faster. (You should see it start up from hibernate mode, it loads like 4 times faster. )
What I meant by right-clicking, though, was if you go to 'All Programs' and right-click any folder, and choose Open. The folder should open, but it would just bring up a move/copy dialog instead. |
Karadur
Posts: 522/1192 |
I just tried the right clicking on a Start Menu item, and choosing 'Open'. Interestingly enough, the program opens, but explorer.exe crashes Only in the recently opened programs list though. If I open the All Programs menu, then do the right-click thing, it opens fine.
You say you had to reinstall Windows to fix your problem. Would a repair install have a chance of fixing that, or would it have to be a fresh install? Hopefully it's the first one, because there's a fair bit of stuff I'd want backed up first |
HyperLamer
Posts: 2814/8210 |
Ugh, you're having the same problems I was. (When you right-click something in the Start menu and choose Open, does that come up too? It did for me before I reinstalled, very annoying indeed.)
Also I wouldn't be surprised to see a virus that only deletes a few specific files, just to mess with your head. |
Karadur
Posts: 521/1192 |
I know I ran scandisk in safe mode on the 24th. I went to leave the computer defragmenting, since we were going out for the night, and it told me scandisk had to be run first. I tried to run it, and it told me the thing about needing to access files that were currently locked, and that it'd run the scan on the next computer boot. So I ran it, and came back to find the computer at the logon screen, and everything appeared to be fine; it let me defragment the drive after that, so it must've worked like it was supposed to. If it is a virus, I'd expect it to do more than target a few specific files. Not to say that I think you're wrong, but I don't see why it would remove two select files, and leave the rest alone. It's worth mentioning that I haven't encountered any other errors of this sort with other programs either.
I can't say I've ever had the problem with copying a folder, and it being deleting right after the copy was done, thankfully.
On the thing about the CD drive, I too was able to fix the problem by rebooting the computer. That's a fine solution when only one CD's involved for whatever, but when more than 1 is involved, it becomes frustrating I suppose I could've told him to make ISOs of the CDs, then use Alcohol 52% to install the game, but that thought didn't come to my mind then. I haven't cleaned the drive at all since we got the computer, so that could be an issue I think my Mom's got a CD player cleaning CD somewhere, so I'll try using that
When I tried to delete all but the most recent restore point, the thing did not appear to freeze, or stop responding. I could still go to other tabs fine, and click the OK or Cancel button to get out of the window. I can still do the 'normal' disk cleanup, that compresses old files and such, so it makes no sense that I wouldn't be able to delete the restore points Searching on Microsoft's site for 'unable to delete restore points' and similar phrases didn't turn up anything useful either.
Originally posted by max I had the same problem a while back. Getting a new one solved it for me
That may be the only way to fix it, but until I know for sure, I'd prefer to not have to go out and buy a new drive. What little money I have right now I'm saving up Thanks for letting me know of that easier way to add the quick searches. I can't believe I never noticed that before |
HyperLamer
Posts: 2808/8210 |
The missing files problem is more than likely a virus, but could be a hard drive problem. Try rebooting and running scandisk in safe mode. (Interesting note, though: Yesterday I copied a folder from the Program Files on my new (currently broken) Windows install to the old one that I was running (had to copy the movie player to watch Ranma ). It should have been in both, but it wasn't... So I copied it from the other drive, and went to open the movie again... The folder I'd just copied was gone! Any time I copied it there, it would disappear as soon as I opened another window. The only way I got it to stay was to actually open the folder. So you aren't the only one who's had this sort of a problem... I don't suspect a virus, though, AVG is running 24/7.
As far as your CD-ROM problem, I also had a similar experience. In my case the drive refused to eject, so I had to do it manually with a paper clip, and after doing so Windows still insisted there was a CD inside and would cause errors trying to read it. Your problem sounds similar, that the drive or Windows itself hasn't acknowledged the drive being opened/closed. The only way I managed to fix this was to reboot, lucky it only happened once. If possible, connect a different drive for a while; if it happens again, it's most likely a Windows problem or a faulty cable. Although, before you go doing all that... Have you cleaned it? Dust does strange things to electronics, especially when high-precision lasers are involved.
As for the system restore problem, I can't imagine why it didn't go through. Did any errors come up, or did the program seem to have just crashed? Often when a program has seemed to stop responding, it's really just busy. If the program doesn't respond to window messages (what Windows uses to tell a program the mouse is being clicked, the window's been maximized, etc) after a certain time Windows assumes it's caught in an endless loop, but in most cases it's simply a very long loop (hence why it doesn't actually close the program on its own) and will start working again once it's done. (You'll usually notice this if making the program do a lot more than the programmers would have expected; Photoshop does this frequently when applying complex filters to large images.) If the operation appeared to complete successfully, though, then I can't think of a reason it wouldn't have worked.
BTW, VLC Media Player is a great program if you can put up with the interface. Not sure if it supports SWF, but it's nice to have in general. (Unlike M$'s bloated media players, it plays everything at full speed on this slow computer. ) |
macks
Posts: 526/900 |
Originally posted by Karadur google, dict, slang, and the other searches you can use in the address bar of Firefox
Right click a search box > "Add a Keyword for this Search...".
Originally posted by Karadur Weird things with the CD/DVD Drive
I had the same problem a while back. Getting a new one solved it for me |
Karadur
Posts: 519/1192 |
I could be sure I had Media Player Classic on here before, but apparently I didn't Anyhow, I tried that program, and it gave me a message saying 'Can't create shockwave control' when I tried opening a .swf file. Thinking about it, I figure this is most likely because swflash.ocx isn't where it's supposed to be for whatever reason
Thanks for the suggestion though |
FreeDOS
Posts: 979/1657 |
hrmm.... that looks like Windows Media Player 6. Perhaps Media Player Classic (which can also play .swf) will work for you. This isn't fixing your problem, but it may give you another option. |
Karadur
Posts: 517/1192 |
Swiff Player is a program that lets you watch Flash movies that are on your computer. Flash player obviously does the same thing, but I don't have it installed on this computer. It could need the flash plugin for Internet Explorer, and I have the feeling I should know the answer to this next question, but where do I get the plugin? The only choices I get when running the flash player installer are for Firefox 1.0 and Firefox 1.0PR. Macromedia's site doesn't have IE listed as a 'supported' browser either
Thanks for the answer to the Firefox quick search question though Like I said before, I knew the option was there. I just couldn't find it |
Smallhacker
Posts: 1200/2273 |
I'm not exactly sure what Swiff Player is, but maybe it reqires the Flash plugin for IE?
Edit: The search thingies can be edited in the Bookmarks window. Look in the folder "Quick Searches". |
Karadur
Posts: 505/1192 |
google, dict, slang, and the other searches you can use in the address bar of Firefox I'm talking about the searches you can perform by typing a certain word, then what you want to search for in the address bar. For example, if I wanted to find out what the word 'paper' meant, I'd type 'dict paper' in the address bar. The question I have in regards to this is, how do I go about adding more searches in there? I've come across the settings for it before, but now when I go searching for them, I have no luck finding them again I have looked on Mozilla's site, and unless I haven't looked for long enough, I'm not able to find the answer there.
Files that have seemingly vanished from the computer A couple days ago, I tried to load up Swiff Player to watch a flash movie I'd downloaded, but it told me Flash wasn't installed on my system, and to go to macromedia.com for details. I know for a fact I installed flash, because the program worked before Anyhow, I went to the site, downloaded the flash player plugin, and installed it for Firefox. I tried loading up Swiff Player again, and it told me that it couldn't find 'swflash.ocx'. All subsequent flash player installs didn't do anything else.
I did a google search for 'swflash.ocx download' but there were no sites that had it. I am able to play .swf files by dragging them into the Firefox window, and that works fine for me, but I'd like to know what caused / why that happened
While searching through Macromedia's site, I downloaded the shockwave player plugin, and installed it, but it didn't do anything either.
The same thing happened with Winzip. I don't remember the error message that popped up, but it was something about a missing .dll file. I reinstalled Winzip, and now it's working fine, but once again, I don't see what would cause that, outside of a virus or something similar, which leads me to what to say next.
I've scanned this computer with both eScan2003 (this is a virus scanner / firewall, for those that haven't heard of it), and F-Prot Antivirus (both had the latest updates installed. F-Prot came across a file in the Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 folder, that was obviously for part of a roller coaster track, and identified it as a possible boot sector virus. That shouldn't be an issue either way, since due to the fact that I don't play it a whole lot anymore, I uninstalled it earlier tonight. eScan found about four viruses, but deleted the files that were infected.
I'd like to rule out the virus possibility, but I'm not sure if that's safe to assume yet.
Other than that, everything else still works like it's supposed to, that I've noticed at least.
Weird things with the CD/DVD Drive I was made aware of this early on in the morning today. I had a friend over for the night, and he brought along a couple games to install on our computer. Of course, the way we go about things, they were CD's he'd burnt Anyhow, he got the original game to install fine, but when he tried to do the expansion, it wouldn't work. I don't remember exactly how it went, but hopefully you understand this next bit.
He put in CD 1 of the expansion, and ran the install on it. Eventually, as it was supposed to, it asked for CD 2. He put it in, clicked the box so the installation would continue, and popped up an error message saying that CD 2 was needed. That went on for a bit, but eventually he got it to work. Unfortuantely though, I was out of the room when he did. The install ran fine, then asked for CD 1, to finalize the installation or whatever it said. He put it in, clicked OK, and another error message popped up, telling him to insert the correct CD. This time, he couldn't get it to work at all. Even after taking the CD out of the drive, you could still access any of the directories on the CD. We got his music CD that he brought over as well, put it in, and it still said the second game CD was in the drive . I've had issues like this with Alcohol 52%, but not with the actual drive.
He made a comment to the effect of our drive being screwed, and possibly our computer being that way as well. From what he said, next time he comes over he's going to bring his copy of Norton 200?, and install it, but I don't see what that could dig up that the other two virus scanners wouldn't have already detected.
It's probably worth it to say that in the close to 11 months that we've had the computer, the CD drive's not been used a whole lot. In the past while, it's only been used to watch a couple DVDs.
If you need to know, this computer is running Windows XP Home SP2, there's still 22Gb or so left for hard drive space, and if you need any other stats, you'll have to ask I imagine a quick way to solve these problems would be to do a format of the hard drive, but unless that's absolutely necessary, I'd rather not. Now you know the three questions / problems, I have, so hopefully you can help
Edit: remembered one more thing, but there might be more after that. I'll just have to remember them.
Deleting Restore Points I've recently come to the conclusion that nearly 10Gb of our hard drive space was taken up by restore points, so I decided to delete them. I right-clicked on 'My Computer', clicked on 'Disk Cleanup' or whatever the button's named. The thing went through, deciding what could be done to clean up the hard drive. After that, the window popped up like it was supposed to, detailing what sort of things could be done, and how much space would be freed from performing those actions. I clicked on the rightmost tab, and clicked the bottom button, to delete all but the most recent restore point. The box popped up for confirmation, and I selected 'yes'. It didn't delete anything though.
I've found another way to do basically the same thing, and that's to go into the System Restore properties dialog box, and set the slider down to 0%. Let it remove the files, then set it back up to what it was at before. I can still create, and most likely use restore points fine, but I wonder why it wouldn't delete them through the other dialog box. |
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