Internet Explorer troubles

[Shinobi]

My Explorer keeps acting up on me. Like when I open it it'll open and the icon from the far upper right corner where the Explorer globe is(or in my case Cox Cable icon) shows up over towards the left where it says "help" and the Explorer wont do anything. It just sits there. Netscape keeps doing the same thing, and it keeps messing it up so I can't open any minimized files, AIM, ICQ, ect....nor play RealPlayer. And if I do get to visit a site if I get any pop up ads it closes my IE and leaves the popup. Or i'm just unable to close either then get the illegal action pop up. I'm running WinXP btw. Any suggestions on why and/or how to fix it?

 

[RyuShiKan]

You might want to first delete all the cookies from your cache.
Also, you might want to upload a newer version of IE or re-upload it if it’s the newest version and see if there are any of those little add on things they come up with for certain issues that came up after XX version was released.

Another thing you may want to do is run you Anti-Virus software to see if those pop ups are caused by illegal java script.
Norton Antivirus had a warning about this several months ago.

 

[Shinobi]

Thanks.

Norton had something on this very thing? I ran McCafee and it said no viruses found.

 

[Elfan]

Get ad-aware and run it: http://www.lavasoft.nu

My guess is that you have lots of spyware crap.

Virus scans are good too.

 

[Shinobi]

I got Kazaa which keeps downloading tons of programs on my PC I keep trying to delete, like cursors for Explorer and such.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Avoid Kazaa like the plague....its incredibly loaded with spyware and other crap. If you must use it, get Kazaa Lite.

Definately get AdAware and the latest ref file and then check your system.

Sounds like a spyware F-up issue to me.

 

[Cthulhu]

Kazaa is the devil. Plenty of other file-sharing apps out there that don't try to overload your system with resource hogging junk.

Cthulhu

 

[Shinobi]

Back to the drawing board. Got that prog, deleted Kazaa, deleted all spyware, deleted my cache files and cookies, and still does it. Only now, it does it to where I can after awhile online only run 1 prog at a time. Say IE, then if I wanna open a folder I gotta close IE to open it or it messes up like that. Ran Virus scan 3 times and came up with nothing. Could it be my memory card dying? I can't see why I could only run 1 prog at a time when I have a 256mb SDRAM card and still have 9gb of hard drive space left.

 

[RyuShiKan]

I doubt it is the memory.
You may want to up date your Antivirus software and check it again. It’s obviously something that was brought into your computer from the outside so I would concentrate on those areas.

What is your Temp. Internet Folders MB amount set to?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Ok, I missed something from your original post... Let me know if I'm following you right:

Explorer is acting strange and appears to look strange.

Netscape also is acting weird.

Pop up ads crash IE

Is this right?


Some things I've heard/seen:
Win XP is a pig. It wants lots of ram, so 256MB is a minimum.
Win XP is buggy. Make certain you have all of the latest service patches and updates from Microsoft.

A suggestion:
If you can, do a full back up of your data, tripple check to make sure you have everything you need, and then do a clean reinstall of XP. Get all the patches, and reinstall first your antivirus software, and then the rest of your apllications and data. Don't go surfing until you have everything back in place, including popup blocker, firewall and antivirus. Do filesharing stuff last.

The only things I can think of that would cause the problems you are having are a Virus, Spyware, or corrupted system files. Best way to fix the latter is to do a clean reinstall.

But, before formatting the harddrive, definately triple check you have everything.

:asian:

 

[RyuShiKan]

Here are some descriptions of the latest Virus'

http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/

 

[Shinobi]

I'm downloading a new Virus Scanner right now to check it out. Reformatting would have to be a last ditch effort, as I have ALOT of files I would lose. Heres what all is happening, the best I can describe. If I reboot and return, it'll run fine for an hour or two. And whenever I get E-Mails I open a new browser to check them. If after awhile of doing that, maybe 4 or 5 times in the hour, it will close my origional browser, and open that one for E-Mail. Then do nothing. Just sit there with the icon from the corner out in the middle. If after restarting and surfing awhile I get any pop up ads, they close the browser but they stay open. If I have something open and they consolidate into one on the taskbar(WinXP users know what I mean), and I have to click for a list to choose which I want open, it wont open the list. If I try and open anything else, it wont open. If I close them all, I can open basic files like "My Computer" but the file stays blank, and the icon for the files does the same. During these periods I also cannot open Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, MSN, ect.


On a side note, which may lead more insight. If I click to open a new window, sometimes instead of 1 Window opening it'll keep opening them, going upwards into the 40's, before shutting them all down and going again.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Without knowing what your filesystem is, I'm not sure how to proceed....

Do you have access to a known-good system where you can create a DOS boot disk?

If you can boot your system from say a win98 CD right to the command prompt and still see the contents of your harddrive I can give you some options on doing a complete scan of your system.

If not, I'm not that upto speed on XP and how it interacts with virus'.

TO be honest though, I don't think its a virus, but a corrupted system file relating to explorer. But without being able to directly look at it, I'm at a loss. I'll do some digina and if I find anything out I'll post it here.

Sorry I can't be of more help. :asian:

 

[Shinobi]

Don't be sorry man, it's okay. I dunno if I can do anything like that. My PC never came with any discs anyways. It has one of those drivers that if you delete everything it reformats it back to how you bought it.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Make sure you got the latest service packs from M$ its about the best I can think of right now....hopefully it'll 'fix' the issue. Just keep in mind it may also make it worse....its M$ afterall. heh.

 

[arnisador]

Read the agreement--it's putting all sorts of junk on your machine.

 

[Elfan]

I use XP.

In my personal expereince:
Service Pack 1 isn't really helpful at all (it actaully drastically decreased my stability) but get all of the other updates.