BleepingComputer.com: Problem in establishing Internet Connection on WIN ME

Hi All,

I am on a WIN ME system with a choice of Browsers installed including : Opera,Firefox,Mozilla and ofcourse IE 6.0 which is basically used for updating the OS ; alongwith the following applications :

a) Proxomitron 4.5 (1.6.2003)
Kerio PFW 2.5.1
c) SpyWare Blaster
d) AdAware SE Personal 1.05
e) SpyBot S&D 1.4B2 ; etc

For some time now I am facing an oft-repeated problem : during the time my dial-up internet connection is being established - suddenly the system freezes - and a row of small uniform vertical green lines is seen stretching from left to right at the top of the screen .The internet connection stalls and the system stops responding. Finally , only after switching off and then on the power - does the system returns back to normalcy.

Any suggestions to what could be wrong.

Thanks in advance.

Is your system a tower or a laptop?
Does the problem only occur when you dial up or also at other times?
At first I was going to say this is a video memory problem but if it only happens with dial-up I'm not sure.
Do you have onboard video or do you have a plug in graphics card? If your video is onboard and you are sharing RAM then this might be due to a program writing to RAM space reserved for video - do you have any programs which are activated at dial-up?

You could run msconfig to turn off most startup items (but leave the anti-virus and firewall alone) for a simple boot - check with the task manager what processes are running (write them down), then dial up and check again. That will tell you what additional processes have been started at dial up. (If you can get in before it locks up.)

Have you run your anti-virus and anti-spyware programs in safe-mode?

hth

Hi Rimmer,

A quick response -

1. System is a Tower.

2. Problem occurs only at dial-up.

3. I dont use plug-in graphics. Details of graphics processor as obtained thru EVEREST are as follows:

Video Adapter nVIDIA RIVA TNT2 M64 (Asus AGP- V3800M)
GPU Code Name NV5M64
PCI Device 10DE / 002D
Process Technology 0.25u
Bus Type AGP 4x
Memory Size 32 MB
GPU Clock 125 MHz
RAMDAC Clock 300 MHz
DirectX Hardware Support DirectX v6.0

4. Addl sys details : I have 70 gH Intel P-4 Processor(mobo - D850MV) with a 40 GB Samsung SV4002H HDD of 5400 rpm and with 128 MB RDRAM and a fixed swap file of 300 MB.

5. I am a regular user of anti-spyware appls like spybot etc and these have not detected anything recently.

6. Shall come back to report after following other suggestions.

Thanks and regards.

Hi Once Again-As suggested :

1. I ran the MSCONFIG - nothing suspicious :

with only SysTray and 2 programs of AVAST - Process Explorer shows- MSGSRV32.EXE ,mmtask.tsk , MPREXE.EXE,
ASHSERV.EXE,EXPLORER.EXE, PROCEXP.EXE,STIMON.EXE,ASHWEBSV.EXE,
SYSTRAY.EXE & WMIEXE.EXE :

Immediately after dial-up - MSGSRV32.EXE ,mmtask.tsk , MPREXE.EXE,
ASHSERV.EXE,EXPLORER.EXE, PROCEXP.EXE,STIMON.EXE,ASHWEBSV.EXE,
SYSTRAY.EXE , WMIEXE.EXE, KERNEL32.DLL,PERSFW.EXE,PROXOMITRON.EXE,
OPERA.EXE ,RNAAPP.EXE,TAPISRV.EXE


2. Ran Adware in the Safe Mode-nil
Ran Spy Bot in the Safe Mode-5 cases of "CoolWWWSearch.SmartSearch" & 1 case of "MySoft" detected - All Redirected Hosts-All removed excepting "ZeroSpyWare.com=127.0.0.1" which could not be removed even after restart.

3. I think detection of redirected host is a false positive since I am running a HostFile (hpguru's latest) and this problem does not appear to have been yet sorted out by the Team Spybot though widely discussed on their forum at net-integration.

4. Any other suggestions please.
:mellow:KERNEL32.DLL

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This post has been edited by yogivarun: 31 May 2005 - 01:00 PM

Maybe I'm out of my depth here, there are a number of things I don't understand:

1. Proxomitron 4.5
Never used it, sounds interesting. Disable it to see if it makes any difference.

2.

Quote

Quote

Your Intel motherboard specs do NOT list onboard graphics so you do have a plug-in AGP card.

3.

Quote

That's one heck of a processor!


Something is interfering with the display RAM or it is faulty. Try replacing the AGP.

This post has been edited by Rimmer: 31 May 2005 - 08:48 PM

hey yogivarun, not too sure but it could be an IRQ or memory address problem. Open up your control panel and go to the system icon, click on the hardware tab and click device manager. Search through the list for any yellow exclamation marks, if you see any post back what you can see. If there aren't any conflicts there....well i don't know, sorry. BTW i'm not sure if this is how to get to the device manager in ME but if you cant find it use the Windows Help and Support tool to find it. Good luck! ......and i want to know where you got your cpu and how you modded your mobo to run it, lol, just jokes. You may want to to check what it really is on the Hardware tab when you open up the system properties.

This post has been edited by lucent: 31 May 2005 - 09:10 PM

Hi,

Rimmer-1. You are right regarding graphics being a plug-in.

2. Prox is a local HTTP Proxy and being used by me for more than a year without any hiccups and i dont think this could possibly be the source of my problem.

3. Isnt the solution suggested somewhat drastic ?

Lucent- 1. Device Manager doesnt show any exclamations-yellow or otherwise.

2. I had purchased the system - duly configured - about 4 yrs back and have only recently started feeling the need to add some ram

3. Of course , Intel has withdrawn its support a couple of yrs back but the system has been working beautifully-by and large . It is problems like these which give spice to computing and without them the experience may become drab. Hope you agree,pal.

However - any other suggestions.

This post has been edited by yogivarun: 01 June 2005 - 08:45 AM