Ok well I know it's very vague but my computer reboots almost randomly now. It seems like it does it more often when I am surfing the web with IE. i've run this simm memory tester program and it didnt find anything wrong. i ran chkdsk and it came up with all these corrupt files from stuff that i had installed recently like AIM and YIM. i had to reinstall some stuff because i was trying to update XP and my comp froze during the update and i couldn't boot my comp back up after...so i had to reinstall XP. also, suddenly my IE is lower on my screen. it leaves some space up at the top and it goes a little into my toolbar on the bottom. yes i have it completely maximized. can anyone help me at least get started fixing some of this stuff? i know i didn't provide very specific info, but what exactly would cause the comp to reboot seemingly randomly?
It sounds like it could possibly be a virus of some sort. Have you tried running an AV scan with updated virus lists?
yeah...i am running one now...i ran norton av last week and it found nothing so i got AVG av and it just found 3 infected files. downloader.alchem something.
try to run System restore to restore settings from before the problem occured. does anyone besides myself find it funny that the first thing most people will blame computer problems on is virii? this sounds like nothing mroe than corrupted files due to a failed upgrade....MS updates that fail are notorious for leaving behind corrupted files.
wow. A lot of people are getting viruses on their computers. This has to be the most virus/computer related problems in this forum at once.
jesus christ...now i can't even freaking play yahoo pool. WTF! i've tried to uninstall stuff and it wont work! ARGH!! must firebomb computer!
I wonder if it could be a version of this malware? http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,63280-2,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_next1 New versions of CWS are being released almost every week, and antivirus programs struggle to identify and block all the variants. Many users complain that their antivirus or anti-spyware programs did not detect CWS on infected machines. CWS affects only PCs running the Windows operating system and Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. If users haven't applied the patches that protect computers against security flaws in Java Virtual Machine, it appears that some versions of CWS can install themselves automatically, without users agreeing to install the software. Most versions of CWS are extremely difficult to remove from infected computers. According to Madsen, none of the half-dozen well-known antivirus applications he tried was able to detect the variant of CWS that lurked on his machine. He used CWShredder, a program made by Bellekom, to remove it, but said CWS still comes back after every reboot.
just ran the cwshredder and it only detected one registry file. also a new thing developed...my homepage reset to the about:blank page. this was just in the past 5 min. also after i found the viruses on my comp and removed them i still had the same strange rebooting problem while i was using IE.
I would scan for a virus. The "big threat" of the week -- a worm -- is supposed to cause the computer to re-boot itself at random, and change some of the settings. Since that's pretty much the symptoms you describe, it's a good place to start. I recently went through a round of intermittent problems with my PC -- it would lock up and quit responding, reboot at odd times, etc. It was hard to pin down because it was inconsistent -- and when it worked, it passed every diagnostic I could throw at it. I eventually found out I had a bad hard disk.
