BleepingComputer.com: My Computer Crashes On Start-up

Hello Evryone!

I am in desperate need of help!

I did an Anti-spy ware scan and then a hard drive clean up on sunday march 23 2008. On sunday afternoon That is when my computer started to crash upon start-up, when it would reach a certain point. I am not sure if the Anti-spyware scan or the hard drive clean up did any thing to harm my computer settings. Or if during the clean-up I accidently deleted some files that were needed to operate my computer properly.

I have tried getting help through Dell, but the techs there seem a little on the incompetant side if you ask me. THey say about remote help, but then forget to give me a code to access it! The one tech was helping me, but then for over 45 minutes to an hour was doing absolutely nothing with my computer that I could see. And it was getting close to 1:00 am and I had to get up early, so I ended the remote help. After letting them know I was going to do so in 5 minutes if he/she did not respond. No response. So I ended it and went to bed! I Know my McAfee Antivirus was damaged, but now It just downloaded new files and fixed the problem. So that is fine now. I hope.

Now Back to my problem. The one tech deleted some files and moved some files. I do not know if that fixed the problem or not. Because I started up my computer and came online this morning and try to find out if that was all the Tech needed to do or if there was more? But got the run around when the other techs forgot to give me a code to access the remote help. Idiots!! I would like to know if there is a way to print out the Data Logs or to share my data logs. so someone can tell me if what is on those logs caused the crashes? Also I know some of the things on the logs is not related to the crashes and some are. But would like to find out what is so I can try and fix and then prevent from happening again!

I will provide more information when you request it. So I can keep this short for everyone to read!
THank you
Matt "Groffeaston"

Hi Matt, have a look in event viewer right click> computer>manage>event viewer.You can use this link to help find details of the event just put the event ID number in the space which is in the link http://www.eventid.net/

Hello everyone!

Here is an update! I got an email from Dell the other day after they tried to call on the phone, and was unable to contact me. I returned an email asking if what the Tech had done was everything that was needed to solve the problem or if more was needed to be done. I heard back from them and they said that it should be solved. But to let them know if it pops up again.

Now, All I want to know about is the information on the data logs and figure out what caused the computer to crash and try to prevent it from happening again. So I can then Figure out how to fix it again if it happens to me again!

I know some of the messages on the logs are minor things like the Broadcom controller which is for broadband internet access. Or Highspeed internet access. But there are others that are a little more difficult to pinpoint. As to if they are related to the crash or if they are just minor in nature, and I do not need to worry about them. Because I do not have a program for it or hardware for it or a something else that does not affect the normal operation of my computer.

I will also look at that web site for the codes. Thanks for the info about the web site.

Matt "Groffeaston"

Hello Everyone!

So far I have not been able to determine what caused my computer to crash. I have been going over the codes in the data logs and then looking them up to see what they are and what information there is on them. So far not much to go on there yet. Nothing, that I can tell, would cause my computer to crash. But I have only gone though the one data log so far(System). I got the others to go though(Security,Applications). Maybe they might turn something up.

I thought I would give you an up-date as to what I found or not found so far. Someone told me they think it could be a virus. But I told them I did not think so because my scans did not turn up anything. But maybe I should rescan to see if anything snuck in undetected while my McAfee was somewhat down those few days. But when McAfee came back up and did a scan nothing showed up. I will try Spybot,a-squared free, and SUPERAntiSpyware free to see if anything turns up.

The same person who said it might be a virus recomended Avast. I also heard Avg is good. Would either or both of them interfer with what I have now? Would they slow my computer down if I added them both? Or should I just stick with what I have? or What would it wurt to add more antispyware scanners to my arsennal? What do you think or recommend I should do?

I will keep you updated as to what I find out or do not find out in the data logs.

Matt "Groffeaston"

Only use one antivirus at a time, otherwise they may conflict with each other.

The simplest way to tell if your McAfee was corrupted is to try one of these free, online scans:
Be advised that some of these scanners will pickup things in "quarantine" from other anti-virus programs - so review the results carefully:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
http://onlinescan.avast.com/
http://ca.com/us/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

<links compiled on 02/14/2008>

Hello usasma!

With the Antispyware I do not use them at the same time. I use them one at a time. I scan with one then another then another. To see what they find. If one finds something I will usually scan with the others immediately afterward. If the one does not find anything then I will still scan with the others to make certain that they did not miss anything.

As for the McAfee viruscan I know it was damaged, because when it opens up automatically it said that it was not operating properly. So I tried the fix it now button. That did not work. When that did not work it said that it might be damaged or files could have been deleted. So When it came time to check for updates it reinstalled the Virusscan. Then everything in McAfee worked fine. So like I said earlier, either it got damaged during the virus scan and delete or some cookies or some files got deleted accidently when I did the hard drive clean up.

I have one more question to ask. but do not know if I should make a seperate post topic or just ask it here? It is about a software program called "Registry Smart". Recently Spybot S&D has been picking it up as a problem for my computer. Now my question is: Should I leave it go or should I get rid of it? Registry Smart is a registry cleaner and scanner. I am concerned that if I leave it, it might be the cause of my problems. Because with changing the registry it could cause problems like that or worse. But it could also prevent those types of problems also. What do you suggest I do?

Also, back to my original problem with the computer crashing. I will continue checking the data logs tonight to see what they say. I am going to check the Event ID's and the source, to see if maybe that might shed a little light on to why my computer crashed.

I will keep everyone up to date as to what I find out.

Edit: PS My Spybot scan turned up 2 problems that are quite interesting. 2 programs: 1)FakeAlert and 2) FakeAlert.cc There are 7 items under FakeAlert and 1 item under FakeAlert.cc Now what should I do about this? Delete it after Quarentining it? Could this have caused the crashes?

"FakeAlert" is also known as a variant of a Smitfraud infection that usually comes along with a Vundo infection. Many Scanning programs are scams or 'rogue' applications that warn you of an infection, then in order to get rid of it, you must pay.

I would suggest that you do this....
Download HijackThis™ here:
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/th.../hijackthis.php

Right click on it and choose "Run as Administrator". Click 'Do a System Scan and Save logfile'.
The HJT log will open in notepad.

Read the pinned information at the top of the forum link, then copy and paste the contents of the HJT log into a NEW TOPIC in "HijackThis Logs and Malware Removal"
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum22.html

Please be patient, as our HJT Team is very busy.

Hello!

I posted the HJT log the other night/early morning. I just forgot to mention it here! Sorry about that! I have been looking at the Event Viewer to see if I can see anything there. I think I might have found something. But it could be nothing, but not sure. I will mention it here. If it requires me to have a seperate topic post then please let me know.

What I found is that after I did the Anti-Spyware scan and then the Hard Drive clean up, There seems to be 4 files that are keep poping up in the Event ID's under the Security section. The message that comes up is: "Code integrity determined that the image hash of a file is not valid. The file could be corrupt due to unauthorized modification or the invalid hash could indicate a potential disk device error." Then the it lists the file name,date, and time. The file names that are listed are:

\Device\HarddiskVolume3\PROGR~1\GOOGLE~1\GOEC62~1.DLL Showed up 8:33:50pm on 3/23/2008 incident #1 **
\Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files\DellSupport\Drivers\dsunidrv.sys Showed up 8:34:12pm on 3/23/2008 incident #1 *
\Device\HarddiskVolume3\Program Files\SUPERAntiSpyware\SASENUM.SYS Showed up 8:34:44pm on 3/23/2008 incident #2 ****
\Device\HarddiskVolume3\Windows\System32\drivers\atwpk2.sys This did not start showing up until 12:30:49am on 3/25/2008 incident #9 ***

What should I do about this now?

I went even further back to see if any of these showed up before in the Event viewer. Guess what? They did!
* = First appeared on 7/3/2007 at 10:24:40pm
** = First appeared on 7/4/2007 at 11:39:11am
*** = first appeared on 7/4/2007 at 11:40:16am
**** = first appeared on 2/20/2008 at 7:50:42pm

What should I do about this apparent new problem or old problem that is now getting worse or showing up now?

Should I do a check disk of my harddrive? Actually I think I will! just to be safe! I will let you know what it turns up. Also I will do another scan with Spybot,SuperAntispyware and a squared free to see what they turn up!

I would use a bootable hard drive diagnostic utility from the manufacturer of your hard drive. Since you boot from the diagnostic disk, this will not affect the HiJackThis log that you have posted. Please do not do anything else to the system as it may make the HiJackThis results invalid, or worse, it could cause the malware to morph into another, harder to remove form.

Because of this, I'm closing this topic. You can PM a moderator to reopen it once the HiJackThis log topic has been finished.