Friends Computer giving error messages at startup and shutdown

Hi,

Long story short:

My friend got a virus or a trojan or something nasty on his computer to the effect that he had to take it in to Best Buy to have them look at it and fix it. They did take care of it, or so he thought. To make matters worse, they had to reinstall WinXP and didn't bother backing up his hard drive, therefore 5 years of data went out the window. He bought NAV and installed that. The computer worked fine for a few weeks, but lately it's been acting up again. He can't get online, Corel Draw 11 won't work, NAV won't work,and he's getting error messages on startup and shutdown.

His system specs:
Dell
P3 698 MHz
512 MB RAM
XP Home Edition SP2

I don't think the tech guys at Best Buy told him that when they reinstalled XP, that SP2 was part of it.

Startup Error messages:

registration.exe - Unable to locate component WSOCK32.DLL

msmsgs.exe - Unable to locate component WSOCK32.DLL

Cfgwiz.exe - Unable to locate component WSOCK32.DLL

ccApp:ccApp.exe - Unable to locate component WSOCK32.DLL (when I click on OK, the same box pops up 2 more times)

ccApp.exe - Unable to locate component WSOCK32.DLL (when I click on OK, the same box pops up 8 more times)

Norton Antivirus Error: NAV has encountered a interneal program error. Uninstall and reinstall NAV.
3030.25

Shutdown error message:

When I try to shut down, a blue screen comes up with the following:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen. restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check to make sure any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation, ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any Windows updates you might need.

If problems continue, disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to us Safe mode to remove or disable components, restart your computer, press F8 tp select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe mode.

Technical Info:
*** Stop: 0x0000000A (0x000002DC, 0x000000FF, 0x00000000, 0x804E3B58)

I would uninstall NAV, but since it's not my computer, I would rather wait and see what the experts say. If this belongs in the hardware section, please move it to there. It strikes me as more software than hardware. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

Hello zekeburger,

According to Microsoft, the root cause of this problem is an incompatible hardware device or device driver.

The error and remedies.
https://www.smartcomputing.com/tech...ea57d2669fd40b4a20f73a619e186fa&ErrorID=21131

Regards - Charles

 

Can he use System Restore to go to a known working date? Have any peripherals changed recently? Charles' link describes how to rectify driver issues. Tell him to unplug everything that's not necessary, before he tries to boot to safe mode (tap F8, sometimes) to correct any driver problems. If he can boot to safe mode w/ networking, he may be able to get online to download any updates or drivers he needs.

Control Panel> System> Device Manager

XP is pretty good about telling you what hardware is goofing up. It will put an exclamation point or a warning triangle next to anything that isn't playing nice with it. If nothing shows, have him reboot and plug in his devices, one at a time.

Johanna

 

I should have specified that I have the computer here at my place. It has nothing attached to it except the monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

There wasn't anything in the Device Manager labeled as not working.

Should I uninstall SP2 and then reinstall NAV and see that takes care of any problems?

 

Maybe it related to the malware removal and he needs to run the LSP-Repair tool.

http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm

 

zekeburger,

Don't blame/remove SP2.

Have you tried Johanna's suggestion: Can he/you use System Restore to go to a known working date? Also check with your friend whether any new devices were installed recently that you may not know about.
Either way, in addition to all the other suggestions, do a cleanup acording to These suggestions.
Also read: Cleaning up your Hard Drive.
Suggest you use sfc (at a command prompt) to make sure that all the system files are ok, especially WSOCK32.DLL, and then run an online virus scan in addition to the adaware and spybot which need to be updated online first. If none of these suggestions solves the problem download and run hijackthis and post a log here.

 

I'll be going out of town Friday, Saturday, and most of the day Sunday for Christmas. I'll try the suggestions of sparrow and surferdude2 on Sunday and post here what happened.

I'll ask my friend about anything he's installed recently.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

Sorry for the severly late update folks. I ended up staying at my parents house a little longer than normal. Also it took me repeated calls to get my friend to bring over his XP disc so I could run the sfc command and check that the files were fine.

I ran the LSP-repair tool and nothing happened. Still no internet, nothing, nada, zilch, zip.

I ran the sfc command and basically just sat there for an hour or so while it asked to retry finding the XP disc over and over.

I would restore the computer, but the only programs he has installed in the last 3 months were Kazaa, which he removed, and Corel Draw.

He ordered a new computer and will just take this one to Best Buy and have them fix it for free. They FUBAR his computer last time to the point of them erasing 5 years of data. To compensate for that, they offered to fix his computer for free. It sounds like they knew something would go wrong after they got it back from them.

Thanks for the help everyone! I hope my friend has better luck with his new machine. I plan on giving him a CD with Mozilla Firefox, Ad-Aware SE, Spyware Blaster, Spybot S&D, and HiJack This to help him protect his computer. Should I put anything else on there?

 

Hello zeke,

This is the Giant anti-spyware that MS bought and is very good at finding malware - when tested did better overall against SSD and AAW. Your friend sounds like a person that should run the resident protection process, that'll be a big help in keeping garbage out. Does have it's quirks though See the long thread on it in General Security section.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displaylang=en&Hash=5BMW635

Regards - Charles