Piano World Home Page Forums Restricted and Archives The Coffee Room Are there any computer wiz's out there?

If so, I have an important question. I think that my computer may have some kind of a virus on it. My memory free went from 1.8 gigs to just 877 megs overnight, despite the fact that I had just very recently un-installed several programs that I never use anymore, and deleted many files. I got rid of a few more things today, and my amount of free memory went up to 996 megs, but has since dropped to 842 megs. Also, my scan disk and defragment programs have been acting up. They don't run properly, they continually restart themselves and get nothing accomplished. Please, I NEED SOME HELP! I'm going to take it to a tech if problems continue, but I'd like an opinion here.


Thanks. And sorry that this post has nothing to do with piano.

jgoo,

If you haven't installed any large programs or downloaded a gig of data, you may have a virus. Though, it may very well not be.

The best thing is to download the latest virus definitions for your virus scanner ( assuming you have one ) or download any decent scanner such as McAfee's or Norton AntiVirus software.

If a virus scan finds nothing, its unlikely you have a virus. It's a good idea to emptry your recycle bin. This might seem obvious, but you may have a third party utility running that requires it to be emptied more than once - seems crazy, but it is a possibility. I've worked on systems that have Norton Systemworks installed and this seems to be the case for them.

Also, check that windows is deleting your temp files. Assuming you're running Win95,98 or newer, these are located in the folder c:\windows\temp. More often than not you will find that Windows (...I'm assuming you're a Windows user.. ) does not delete files it is supposed to! Typical. You can safely delete these.

Viruses aren't really anything to be afraid of, so don't worry.

Your post may be off topic, but if you're computer goes offline, then you couldn't access this forum

Hope this helps, and I hope you sort the problem out soon. Let me know how you go


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Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.

There is an excellent free anti-virus program at www.grisoft.com that will catch things that McAfee and Norton won't. It works so well, it's hard to believe its free. PNO2NER

Uh-oh! You're referring to storage as memory.

Memory is going to be in MBs (megabytes) at least for the next several years. You're referring to gigabytes of rooma available (or not) on your hard drive.

You're swap file could have been altered, there could be a virus (I doubt it) OR...it could be that you did something (have you been in Exporer lately? Hmm? Admit it).

Most often, users do the damage. Get Norton or something else, but I have a funny feeling that it won't fix it. 99% of the time the problem can be found between the chair and the keyboard.

You must know someone who knows about this stuff. If the anti-virus doesn't work, get someone to look at it.

I just had this same problem arise last week(the defragging unable to complete)but in addition I couldn't obtain a 128 bit encrytion from I.E. 5.5 and as a result was unable to access accounts at my brokerage and credit card companies.

I wound up calling Microsoft which I wouldn't advise unless you have alot of extra time to kill(too many of those techs come across as befuddled)but the one I did consult with traced the problems to cab file problems on the hard drive. Consequently, he was sending me a new CD for Windows 98 but I'll still need to re-download the I.E. 5.5 again.

BTW, another defrag program might work better for you as I've seen so far in my situation. It's called "diskeeper" and you can get a free trial by downloading at the download.com site.

Mark Mandell

jgoo,

See my post on the thread on Pianist Corner Forum.

Jamie

Thankyou all for your advice. I'm going to download that anti-virus program and see if it catches anything. And, I'm not all too computer litterate when it comes to this kind of thing. I'm always getting terms for one thing confused with others, so please forgive me. It seems that you all knew what I was talking about though. Thanks again!

YAAAH! No virus was detected. I don't know whats been eating up my disk space, but maybe once I defrag my system and close the gaps I will have more. I'm not exactly sure how that works. Thanks again for all of your help!

[ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: jgoo ]

Stay away from "computer whiz" types. They, like fools, rush in.

Find someone with enough know how to see if the temp internet folder is empty, as well as the temp folder and recycle bin.

Good luck.

BrulBruce is correct on this. Look for temporary files. Also, take a look at your c:\windows\temp directory and see if you have a ton of .tmp files. Those files can be deleted. Note: sometimes your computer won't let you delete a certain temp file. Reboot and try again.

Also, your computer might be creating an unusually large swap file (that grows and shrinks in size). Are you using a ram intensive program? If so, a possible solution would be to add more ram. The net effect would be a smaller swap file. One last thing: You should consider getting a larger hard drive. They don't cost that much ($150 for a 30 gig hd 7200 rpm) Applications such as internet explorer are good, but take up space that older computers can have a tough time with. Get w/ someone "in the know". You wouldn't get your car fixed at a grocery store, right?

Oh yeah, diskeeper is good, but the evaluation version doesn't do nearly as much as the full version. If I were you, I'd keep the windows defrag version. It takes longer to defrag, but works very well. (I'm assuming you are using windows 95 or 98)

Hope this helps.

I delete all of those files at least once a week, so it isn't that. But thanks for the advice anyway.

Ok, since we're on the subject of cranky computers and viruses and stuff, maybe one of you can help me with a little problem I'm having with my laptop. It's a rather embarrassing situation, as you'll see. I swear I didn't do it....

I am AOL, but I surf the net with Internet Explorer. While I like IE, I don't like their home page, so I keep Netscape's home page set as my home page. Once I get online with AOL, I minimize it and launch Internet Explorer, with Netscape as my home page. I know how to empty my temp files, how to go into the file cabinet and empty out cache files, I know how to change my homepage on IE, etc. I do not know how to get rid of unwanted urls in my homepage window under tools/preferences, however. I know how to get rid of cookies, the works.

But I have something I cannot get rid of, and it is driving me nuts.

I loaned my laptop to my 22 year old step son. After he returned it a couple of days later, now when I launch Internet Explorer, instead of opening to the Netscape home page, it opens to the nastiest porn site I believe you could ever imagine. I have emptied everything I can empty, I have reset my home page a thousand times, and it will go back to the Netscape home page when I hit the "home" button once I reset it, but if I turn it off and then reboot the computer, when I launch IE for the first time after powerup it always resets IE's homepage to that nasty website and opens it.

HELP!!!

jgoo: Try searching for all files modified since 2/17/02 (or whenever it was just before you observed your disk space take a dive).

larry: Clearly, something during boot or login is resetting your home page. Things to try: (1) virus scan; (2) something new appearing in your start/programs/startup menu; (3) something new in "add/remove programs" that you can remove; (4) as a las resort, the trick I suggested for jgoo above -- search for (and surgically remove) files modified since you loaned your computer out.

Good luck to both.

Larry, that sounds like a terrible problem. How embarrassing it would be if you had a friend over or something who wanted to use your computer and it took them there. Well, after all that you've done, I can't think of anything that would help. Lets make a little check list.

1> Clear the history
2> Clear any cookies files
3> Clear your address bar memory
4> Clear you temp. internet files
5> Run a search on your computer for anything related to that web site in any way, and delete it. Sometimes, files can hide themselves in your computer and you just need to "flush them out"
6> Try (once again) reseting your homepage but only after you have done all of the above
7> I'm out of ideas

Good luck on getting that stuff off of your computer.

Oh yeah, and do check your start up files, too.

The best way to beat computers at their game is to have a large hard drive.

Partition it, and then do you typical Windows install, and install the programs you use frequently.

Make sure everything, eg, virus definitions, are up to date and then make an image of your hard disk, using a program such as Norton Ghost. It's best to store this image on a separate partition, or even better, a secondary hard disk if you have one.

Then you can use your computer as per normal, keeping your documents on the parition that has the image.

Then when your computer gets a little constipated, as they often tend to do, simply reimage the hard disk, and, provided a virus hasn't intervened, should run as well as it first was. The good thing about this is if your hard disk was in perfect shape, no temp files, no internet cache, and defragged, that's how it will be when you've reimage.

It might sound a little complicated, but it's not really... This method is used on a lot of commercial applications, but is also very useful for the home...

Does anyone on the forum do this?

No worries!

Larry,

There's a free program out there called ad-aware. This little utility finds files just like yours and deletes them (it's free) http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

This link will take you there. It should solve your problem.

Hope this helps.

jgoo: What version of Windows are you running? Win 98, Win ME, Win NT, Win 2000, Win XP?

Larry: Right-click on your Internet Explorer icon, select properties, look at the box that says "Target" -- you'll probably see a line that looks like this:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" www.somenastypornsite.com

Delete the "www.somenastypornsite.com" part and your problem should go away.

I run Windows 98 Second Edition. (Win 98 SE)

Larry,

Perhaps the default home page has been reset to this..er...embarrasing site. Under the Tools setting in the menu bar, go to internet options and look at the general settings. Other than this, I don't know what else to tell you.

Jamie