Re: Windows Start Menu

James J. Gavan wrote:
William M. Klein wrote:
Concerning "MSCONFIG" and clean up stuff, I have been using CCLeaner
recently and found it pretty good in cleaning up "temp" stuff AND it
has a fairly decent interface into what I assume is "msconfig" (at
least it does the same kind of thing with a LITTLE more information
about what each existing started application is).

See:
http://www.ccleaner.com/

(I haven't had problems with the "registry cleaner" part - but if
you don't want to use that part, you can turn it off)

Thanks Bill. Took my life in my hands and gave CCLeaner a go
specifically the Registry Cleaner.

But before that I used RegCure which I had downloaded and subsequently
paid for because it was specifically marketed as a cure for
Windows32\services.exe problems - but see below.

Jimmy, they ALL say that. Any cowboy trying to flog a RegCleaner will pick
up your search terms and insert them into his ad so it looks like he has a
specific solution to your problem. General rule is NEVER download these
scams.



EACH time I run Regcure, and as Pete observed, perhaps a non-starter
in terms of end-user help, it lists errors by 11 categories. First
runs, there are errors all over the place; gradually they get reduced
by subsequent runs. However, consistently there are errors for Path
Filenames and Empty Registry Items. I have never got the errors down
to ZERO even when I immediately did a second scan.

So before trying CCleaner - Registry

1. Run Regcure - Path Filenames 18, Empty Registry Items 97, Total
115; Clean-up = Zero
2. Run CCLeaner - Registry - big list but not a count that I saw.
Delete whole list.
3. Repeat Step 2 - roughly 10 items perhaps - Delete whole list.
4. Back to Regcure - 28 Empty Registry Items - Fix All
5. Back to CCLeaner - zippo - no entries.
6. Thought OK - give Regcure another go. Step 4 above (Regcure)
informed me it got rid of 28 entries - whereas Step 5 (CCLeaner) said
zero. So with Regcure still loaded I did another scan. No surprise,
we still have a figure of 5 for Empty Registry Items.


Probably not worth worrying about.

That's the sort of thing I was referring to when I said I don't trust
any of them totally. At this point I favour the following FREE
Versions - AVG V 8, Ad-Aware and CCLeaner from what I have achieved
so far.

They are all good. So is Avast!.

I hope you backed up the Registry before running any of this...:-)


One NOT to try is Registry Cleaner. A Free Download, (they really mean
of course a Free Trial). Without knowing, I wouldn't mind betting they
hike the numbers. They plague the life out of you if you don't
complete the sign-up. Can't remember sequence, but I was filling in
their info box to <Submit>, had entered my e-mail address - noticed
something
about the price and quit the dialog. Smart boys :-

a) On event TabKey store entry-field contents, if any
b) On event Cancel (and perhaps Quit) -
check if the TabKey entryfield contains what looks like a valid
e-mail address then pester the living daylights out of the
potential sucker with a host of e-mails enumerating disasters
that can occur by not using their software.

Not sure which checker I was using - but for screen display it was
listing items for the category, "Checking potential areas where
viruses/Trojans can be placed", with pathnames of course. Well how
about that. Could it be that hackers know exactly where not to place
their 'bombs' and place them somewhere else.

Fortunately for us, they cannot just place them anywhere because they'd
possibly never get executed. Certain locations are favoured for this reason.


SERVICES.EXE :

I wont write separately about Security as I intended, so I'll cover
Win32\services.exe here. I should mention I no longer try and use
Trend Micro Housecalls - it has lousy communication screens and I
found that it was telling me it was going through phases, but leaving it
alone
for some 30 minutes I got the message it was in a loop. (To be fair to
Housecalls if may have been negaged by other machine problems that it
couldn't get around. But I satill don't like their screens/dialogs).

It is a useful tool and it is free. However, I agree with you that the User
Interface could be better.



So
far as I could tell, initially using AVG and TM Housecall it looked
like I had cured my problems. Then keeping the Windows Task Manager
active I found performance was just plain awful and established I was
getting "Not Responding" on Mozilla Firefox (Google), and kept
highlighting different lines in the Task Manager until it signaled
Firefox was running.

Did you have multiple instances of it running?



One of the checkers suggested Firefox had been hijacked - that I could
understand very clearly from performance.

Jimmy, as mentioned previously, download and run "HiJackThis". It will
produce a log that definitively shows whether you are hijacked or not, along
with suspicious signatures, startups, and general malware detection. The log
can be used by people who know what they're doing to give you a clean bill
of health. The same people can give you specific actions and cures for
things revealed by the log. There's a user community who do all this for
free. I strongly recommend it. Over years I have become reasonably
proficient at analysing these logs (I don't claim specialist expertise in
it; there are people availabe who do have that expertise and they are
usually glad to help), and I still run it every six weeks or so and check
the log produced. It's a bit like keeping the "official" guardians honest.



So I switched to IE, which I
don't normally use and there was a prompt to download Google Chrome,
which I did. They claim it's a cut down version of the full Google in
IE or Firefox and at this stage somewhat experimental, so they will
occasionally give you a chirpy message like "Oops ! We are sorry for
the inconvenience but we have a problem. We need to shut Chrome down
and Restart - Yes or No".


For info - I can access the Prima Computing site from Google Chrome.

Thanks for that. I'm glad it renders OK. Have not tried Chrome myself.

I didn't get any "Not Responding" messages from the Task Manager on
either IE or Chrome. BUT......... the next one that came up, and I
don't have screens to quote, "Application Sharing Error (or whatever
the title is) followed by some text with a <OK> or <Cancel>. Don't
know why they bothered with the <Cancel> - you get the same result -
a small square Dialog telling you there are errors blah, blah and the
error is something like "Error -5896743". And we will shut your machine
down in
60 seconds and Restart.

This is almost certainly caused by a conflict between Chrome and IE. Try
removing Chrome and see if it still happens.

Sorry for being a pedantic former Systems Analyst - but why tell me
you are shutting down and restarting when the machine will contain
the same error ?

If you were really a pedantic former Systems Analyst you would know that
this causes .dlls to be reloaded and the sharing conflict to be resolved...
(all currently marked share flags are reset to unlocked ), so it WON'T have
the same error (unless, of course, you exactly retrace your steps and cause
the same conflict to occur again... :-))


That informative error number above - go check the
Microsloth site - you gotta be kidding. You get some help from MS on
services.exe, some KB articles devoted to specific problems and a
caution to only use with your problem - how come fixes to
services.exe are not cumulative?

Because a specific fix may apply only to a specific configuration.

It may be a workaround, pending a proper update (which IS cumulative).

Yes Richard, obviously I'm being
naive again.

Well, you're certainly being something... :-)

I tried Safe Mode but without selecting 'Safe Mode with Networking' I
couldn't e-mail or browse.

What did you expect from Safe Mode? Why do you suppose it is available?

It is INTENDED to be a minimal config. (So most of the things you "take for
granted" won't work.) The idea is that you add drivers back to it until you
identify the one causing the problem. Safe mode is a diagnostic mode
intended for running down and fixing problems.


Devices like the Lexmark printer aren't
loaded for Safe Modes and AVG does only a short hand version scan
with a DOS screen white on black, top line only. So I experimented on
recovery in Safe Mode and when the different types of services.exe
error dialogs came up dragged them to the bottom right out of sight
so I could carry on working. Occasionally, but not on a daily basis, I
responded to an
MS Dialog 'Send Error Report' or 'Ignore'.


If you are having trouble with Services.exe this can be quite serious. You
don't tell us what the actual error message pertaining to this said. This is
the service that executes other services, so if it isn't running there will
be loads of things that don't work correctly.

If I were you, I'd find out what was choking it as a matter of priority.
Resolve that and you'll probably find that most of your other problems
disappear.



Avast3 is one security checker I haven't tried yet (info passed on by
our MS Excel expert - "List of Invokes"). Avast3 is a Freebie but
their latest is Avast 8 - Free Trial then pay.

It is excellent. I used it for a while a couple of years back and preferred
it over AVG. In fact, I believe I have recommended it here in this forum.


I used a mix of the
stuff above and eventually Ad-Aware seems to have done the trick -
but probably a combination with the others. I still haven't been
brave enough to re-load Firefox as Google Chrome seems adequate. Still
getting those
services.exe errors so repeatedly as one occurred I triggered 'Send
Error Report'. I did sometimes quickly see the word 'Updating.....' in
Start-Up - so I'm assuming that's our friends in Bellingham, Wa.
God bless their little hearts the services.exe problem completely
disappeared.(No doubt they were pissed off that some clown in the
Great White North was continuously complaining).

It would be nice if there really were people there taking a personal
interest in each of our systems. As a general rule it is good to send the
error messages to them. They have servers dedicated to analysing these
messages and the most frequent ones get looked at pretty quickly. It looks
as if a Windows update was pending and wasn't applied. (There are any number
of reasons why this might happen).

I'd still want to know what it was that killed Services.exe. Have you
checked the system logs for clues?


Now I'm home and dry, and back to using Windows in normal mode, or so
I thought. I think somebody here, years ago, referred to it at the
'Dreaded Blue Screen'.

That is the famous "Blue Screen of Death" (BSOD). Fortunately rare under XP,
provided the system has enough real memory. My current machine has only ever
had one in nearly 4 years. It was caused by a video camera driver
incompatibility with a previous version of Skype. The VAIO camera built into
the system was running a SONY driver. Skype wanted a different generic
driver and the result was a BSOD. I restarted in Safe Mode and tracked it to
the video driver. Switched to the Skype driver and it was OK, but definition
was less than with the SONY driver. The latest edition of Skype (the
so-called "Business version") has an updated driver that has restored full
resolution and doesn't BSOD. I use Skype video all the time so it is a
relief to have it working reliably at last.

Most BSODs are caused by driver incompatibility or malware. Resolved by
updating the offending driver or removing the offending malware.

"You'se got serious problems buddy and we are
shutting down to avoid damaging your machine" while at the same time
doing a memory dump to disk - but they don't tell you why or where the
dump will be filed.

Sure they do...

"By default, the memory dump file is written to the %SystemRoot%\Memory.dmp
file. If there is not enough free space on the %SystemRoot% drive, you can
redirect the dump file to another location that has enough free space. You
can do this by changing the Dump File path in the Startup and Recovery
options in Windows 2000 and Microsoft Windows XP, or by changing the Write
Debugging Information To path on the Startup/Shutdown tab in Windows NT
4.0."

....or you could just do a search for *.dmp


From memory (Give me a break - how many screen shots of exactly what
happened or was displayed do you think I could possibly make while all
the above nonsense is going on). They suggested the Safe Mode routine,
which I had already discovered - tapping F8 while still in initial
Start-Up. Second suggestion was Restore. Quite painless. Comes up
with a calendar dialog which lets you select an earlier date when
things appeared to work, prior to your current misfortune.

However, if your system was infected at that time and has since been
cleaned, you will re-infect it if you restore. When doing a thorough malware
removal it is best to shut down system restore, then restart it fresh with a
clean system.


It APPEARS to work now - but I await the next disaster. Having loaded
the desktop and icons there is a definite pause. Left clicking on
icons seems sluggish and I have better performance with Right
double-click and select 'Open'. From that point on performance seems
to improve - but you never know............

Try using Hibernate instead of rebooting every day. This can save a lot of
time, but it does take extra disk space. If you can't see "hibernate" on
your system close options, go to Control Panel > Power Options and click the
"Hibernate" tab. Tick the box for "Enable hibernation", then reboot.

Run a full virus scan once a week followed by a cold boot. The rest of the
week you should be able to hibernate. (I have my virus scan scheduled for
Friday nights. It takes several hours as my notebook has over 1.3 million
files on it... :-))

If I have to utilize my time I would much rather do gardening in our
short summers rather than try and become an expert in computer
'innards' technology. The latter turns me on as much as the thought
of servicing my own car !

We are all different and enjoy different things. I enjoy working on my car
and fixing my computer, but I'm hopeless in the garden and the only reason I
can enjoy my garden is because I pay someone to look after it...

Jimmy, Calgary AB

Pete.
--
"I used to write COBOL...now I can do anything."


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