Apps close when trying to open files????

Just reinstalled WinME.

Many applications die suddenly as soon as I try to open a file from within them.

So far I notice this using all of the following:
- Opera
- WinAmp
- Zinf
- WMP
- Sound Recorder and a few others.

MS Office opens files alright.

Never seen anything so quasi-transversal across various apps.

Notice that there is an antivirus installed (clamwin), but it does not have a general "desktop "protection, i.e. files are no all automatically inspected when being opened. [ It would have been a nice failure point, but it isn't!].

Any clue?

Where do I look for something rotting in my system?

TIA

Filippo

 

Hello Filippo,

Where do I look for something rotting in my system?

Go to Quicklinks at the top of this page > Recommended links and if you haven't done so, download/install Spybot - Ad-Aware - MS Anti-Spy, update them and then do the scans.

Error messages when this happens?

Download HijackThis from here http://radiosplace.com/ latest version 1.99.1

Download it to it's own folder, for example C:\HijackThis - unzip (double click on zipped folder) - click on the execute - click scan button - click save log and save to the folder you just created *DO NOT FIX ANYTHING* - copy resultant .txt file and paste into your next post.

This thread will be moved to the Virus/Spyware removal section after you post your log.

Regards - Charles

 

Thank you Steve and Charles!


I cursed myself no end after posting this.... There's one thing worse than not backing up your system: it's BACKING IT UP AND FORGETTING HOW YOU DID IT AND WHERE THE BACKUP IS ! ! !

I had spent hours reinstalling everything after a Category 5 messup.

The trojan concern was not justified as it was a clean install behind two firewalls and from known-clean installers. The bugger was that I did it as I could not find my usual, complete backup of my OS and apps.

I used to boot the PC in Linux and copy onto a separate hard disk
- all the ontent of the C: partition, where OS and apps are
- all the Application Data, which I keep in a separate working data partition
- all the content of a separate "TEMP" partition, where all the cache crud goes
- the master boot record of the hard disk, complete with partition info and bootloader.

I had forgotten that a couple of months back I had for the 1st time made a big improvement. I had backed all that up on CDs using a fantastic Linux app: Mondo Rescue.

www.mondorescue.org

Mondo lets you burn on the fly any number of CDs or DVDs with either filesystems or entire partition images on them. And the kicker is, the 1st CD is bootable. You can step back either some data, or some partitions, or even the whole machine on a new hard disk.

It took me 45 minutes to put WinME and all the apps back where they were in June, plus another hour or so to put the app data and settings back to where they were yesterday.

All that's still missing is a bit of Windows and Office update.

Thanks for the advice anyway!