browsers REFUSING TO CLOSE
 

let me start with saying that my entire system seems a bit buggered up.
takes multiple attempts to boot up and everything is slower in loading. once it gets up and running, however, everything seems fine.
that is until firefox decides to bite the dust...hourglass and so on
so i close it. and then click on 'end task'. but it's still there, so i end the firefox.exe application through task manager. but it stays there!!!
So i open IE. And it gets similarly stuck!
All other progs seem to work fine...adaware and avg show no malicious things in my PC....Any ideas? i dont want to use the eee (this is functioning perfectly BTW) as my main computer!!

It isn't the browser getting stuck, it's something else like Adobe Acrobat plug-in. So you need to look at list of processes running and close the one that is causing the problem.

ctrl+shift+esc to bring up the task list. Check the processes and applications tab, end task to kill the miscreants. if that doesn't work, doing it from the cmd line is more powerful... type tasklist to bring up the list, then taskkill /PID 1234 where 1234 is the process ID number you see in the tasklist.

i ve done the above and the b'stards are still open!!!

I find procexp is better at killing hung programmes than taskman, and doesn;t require the 3 finger salute either.

I have a problem lately on my Mac where certain... ahem... 'exotic'... sites seem to crash Safari. I suspect it's a Flash thing. The whole computer seems to get stuck.

It's probably a browser plug-in. Disable them one at a time until you find the problem. Also, look for updates to your plug-ins, from within firefox. (updates/disable from tools/add-ons menu).

Some add-ons are more "in your face" than others. Which ones are you running?

-David

Exotic sites like FlyerTalk.com?

Do you regularly run full antivirus and anti spyware/adware scans? How old is the system -- sometime you really need to back up your date, reformat the drive and reinstall the operating system and applications.

What OS and how much RAM?

Antivirus is scheduled to run every day, sometimes I cancel it but usually it will have run every other day. I don't use Ad-Aware as often (but I used it yesterday and it found no critical items, just a few cookies). Similarly, I've run defrag within the last week.

It's 3 years old...I've had my HDD changed recently, but it was through a "phantom" copy of the disk and not properly reinstalling everything...There was nothing wrong with the old disk, it just was full and I got a bigger one...maybe new unit is a bit dodgy?


Win XP, 1.3 GB RAM.

First, I would try spybot as well. There's something not right on there. Anti-virus is nice, but it often causes systems to act like yours. My first opinion is that the problem is with the software. I would track down your XP disc, back up your data and do a repair install. That should set your system right. Perhaps first uninstall software you don't use.

If it's a hardware problem, it's not likely your hard drive, but most of the manufacturers have programs you can use to check the drives. There are also free programs out there to check your memory. Most hardware issues would leave you with OS crashes or the inability to boot.

I would also suggest you add as much memory to the machine as you can once fixed. It will work much better with 4GB of ram than it will 1GB and memory is cheap right now. A rule of thumb is that unless you do gaming, graphic design, professional work, etc, then memory is much more important than processor speed.

Absolutely
 

I had the same problem, installed SpywareBot and after removing thousands (no exageration) of spyware, the problem went away. And, I had up-to-date McAfee, which did diddly-squat to help!

Once you clean up your system, disable java, and install the noscript add-on.

I was thinking the same thing. This might be a root kit, which would explain the slow boot-up. Because Firefox accesses the internet, it might be malware that's interfering with it.

I am aware of this. Motherboard max is 2GB. Do you reckon it'll be much better than the current 1.3?

Almost impossible to back up the thing. It's possessed; can't see anything I put into the USB ports (e.g. microSD reader, normal SD reader, HDD MP3 player); it's branding them "unknown devices" (they're all plug and play and have been used recently on the same PC) and when I tried to write things onto a DVD it just stuck and the drive "door" wouldn't even open! :mad:
I have managed to back up the most critical files onto my EEE through BadBlue, but it's still a lot of stuff in that disk...
I will get spybot to see what it comes up with.

Run both Spybot and Adaware -- the combination of the two will catch a lot. Also, make sure you run them from "safe" mode.

currently running spybot...it sure isn't very quick!
As said above, I ran adaware yesterday, could only find tracking cookies and no critical objects.

Did you try disabling your plug-ins one at a time, or disabling all of them, then re-enabling them one at a time?

-David

Yeah, Spybot is slow.

Another thing to try: Somewhere on the Microsoft website is a program that checks for root kits. I don't remember the name, but I found it with a Google search for "root kit removal" or something similar. It's a Microsoft-written program and a free download from Microsoft. It's output is fairly technical, but by looking at the registry hooks that it reports and then running Google searches to identify the items listed, you can easily figure out which belong and which don't. Then you can go in and edit the registry to remove the malicious hooks. Warning: registry editing is not for the faint-of-heart. I did this successfully once when my XP-based desktop somehow picked up a root kit. However, it is an absolute last resort as manually cleaning the registry can easily render the OS completely inoperable.

Apparently, spybot did find something that supposedly was messing my registry up (no other critical objects or anything else apart from cookies).
Rebooted and it was still a massive pain to make the bloody thing start.
I was, however, able to write all documents and media files onto DVDs, so I guess the worst thing that can now happen is I have to buy a new HDD (well, or PC, but I'd rather not!).
Will try the rootkit revealer to see whether I can sort anything out.

For the third time, did you try disabling all browser plug-ins? For IE, spybot will list BHOs in one of it's screens, which are similar to firefox add-ons. In FF, you can disable plug-ins from tools/add-ons.

-David

Oh cheers for that. I was so engrossed with the rest of the stuff (basically saving my data) that I totally overlooked it :o
It seems like the browsers are working more or less ok now....but the general system is as screwed up as ever (at least as far as booting is concerned).


my Firefox add-ons are as follows:
....... Plus
Download Statusbar
Forecastfox (for weather forecasts)

Do you reckon it's worth disabling them?

If you are having problems with browser startup/shutdown, that's where I would start. I have a few, but I don't use any of the ones you mentioned. (I have Roboform, Fasterfox, flashblock and linkification).

The other things to look at are all the startup programs you might be running and don't necessarily need. Also look at all the services you are running to figure out if you really need them or not. Many can be disabled, and some can be set to Manual instead of Automatic startup.

Startup program info: http://www.sysinfo.org/startupinfo.html

Services info: http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/supertweaks.htm

You might also want to check out ccleaner. It has an option to remove old crud that isn't there anymore from your registry and also some other useful stuff like deleting temp files: www.ccleaner.com

It's always a good idea to have a working backup before messing with any of this stuff, just in case.

-David

Do you have the XP disk? You might try a repair installation.

This is a friendlier rootkit program:

http://free.grisoft.com/doc/download-free-anti-rootkit/

You also might try a repair of AVG anti-virus just in case.