What is Backweb? Is it necessary?

Recently, my computer started giving me occasional fits of not wanting to boot up properly. There are a small number of applications that seem to be having, causing or experiencing invalid page faults, general protection faults or just committing illegal operations altogether. One of them is Backweb.

Exactly what is Backweb? Is it necessary to keep it or can I uninstall it? I have looked for info on the 'net and can't seem to find out if it is something I actually need to have on my home computer.

My Compaq has been a good machine, but why they stow so much **** in the software package you don't need I'll never know.

Setup:

Compaq Presario 5304
AMD K6-2 533@550mhz (recently upgraded from 250mhz Cyrix II)
320mb RAM (recently upgraded from 64mb)
PNY Nvidia GeForce 2 32mb Graphics Card (another recent upgrade)
OS: Windows 98SE

 

By the way...the CPU and RAM is fine.

By the way, the memory and CPU upgrades have checked out as fine. I don't think they are the problems.

I have also run defragmenter and other onboard system checks as well.

 

It is Push technology to send things to your computer. Usually bundled with HP Compaq and Dell. May be utilized in pushing updates from them if they actually ever get around to it.

It has been classed as borderline spy/adware. Not useful for a home user. Maybe for large corporate organizations. But I don't see how.

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

More proof that of this is that SpyBot and Adaware do not like it either.

There is nothing from these companies that you could not get by conventional means.

One of the first things I remove from these 3 brands of computers.

To remove it use add/remove but I have noticed lately that they don't put it here. I then look in the c:\program files\Backweb folder for an uninstall or unwise, and then uninstall.

Sometimes I have found neither of these so I manually delete the folder and use a regcleaner to finish the cleanup then run SpyBot and Adaware. In fact this is the correct proceedure to remove any program.

Here are the programs to do this if you want:

Registry and System cleaners

RegCleaner http://www.vtoy.fi/jv16/shtml/regcleaner.shtml

EasyClean1.7 <http://gswi.com/downloads.htm>

Use RegClean and on first screen look at first two coloumns for any reference to BackWeb. While here you can also clean up other things so look for old programs that you had but thought you removed/uninstalled. Only things you are sure about, no guesses.


While still in RegClean go to top bar Tools Registry Cleanup-Do them all. Remove all found. Could be hundreds but remove.

You can also look in Startup List and remove any entries to the offending program if any. Or any others that you do not need to startup automatically when you boot.

In EasyClean do the Unnessesary files and Registry. If you do StartMenu (removes dead links) leave any thing it complains about. Normally I reccomend staying away from Duplicate files but if you use it do not even try on windows files (remove the wrong one and uh oh!)
________________________________________________
Spyware and adware removal

http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/downloads.html

For Spy/Aware always run Spybot first (twice) then Adaware.

If you run the proceedures above it will not only clean Backweb but a full cleaning that will greatly improve overall speed and stability.

Mike

 

Thanks Mike! I appreciate your response!

Thanks Mike for your response. It is very helpful. I downloaded and used most of what you have links to there, so thanks for providing that as well.

It appears my problems may be more involved than just the Backweb application, which I did remove.

I wish I could decipher all the stuff in my startup folder as well as all the **** that came attached to my Compaq computer so I could know what was necessary and what I could safely remove.

By the way, can you decipher this for me?

“A fatal exception OE has occurred at 0028:C0005338 in VXD VMM(01) + 00004338. The current application will be terminated.â€

This is the latest nuisance. Whatever it is, it's preventing my computer from booting up sometimes. I'm beginning to suspect my upgrades or the virtual memory.

What do you think?

By the way, I hope this wasn't improper, but I posted another inquiry more specificly about the overall errors and faults I am experiencing here.

I didn't feel that it would violate the rules to put that in a separate and new thread, all to its own. I hope the moderators agree with me.

Sincerely,

Mark in MS (with fingers crossed behind back while whistling "Dixie ")

 

Ok you asked, so lets finish cleaning. If that don't get it we will have a clean slate to fix what is left.

Cleanups
Boot to DOS (not shutdown to DOS). While booting hit F8 to startup menu. Chose "command prompt only" (you may also boot from a dos floppy). At the command prompt either a: or c: .......

Type these commands exactly

del c:\*.swp (may get file not found, is ok)
del c:\windows\*.swp
deltree c:\windows\shelli*.*
deltree c:\windows\temp\*.* (answer yes to all) "ALL "
deltree c:\windows\tempor~1\*.*
deltree c:\windows\history\*.*
deltree c:\windows\spool\printers\*.*

After booting back to Windows then a scandisk & defrag.

Down load the below, Startup list! It only copies all your startups to a wordpad file. You can easily copy it and paste it back to us in a post then we can advise.

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/startuplist.zip

While we are looking at your startup list the below are the sites that tell you about startups. They tell which ones you do not need or in fact do need! Be looking for yours remove the ones that is says it is OK to remove. You may also be able to identify the Compaq files you were wondering about. And most of these can be removed.

Cleaning startups
http://www.pacs-portal.co.uk/startup_pages/startup_full.htm
http://jeh.ne.client2.attbi.com/TechSupport/index.htm
http://www.3feetunder.com/krick/startup/list.html
http://www.answersthatwork.com/Tasklist_pages/tasklist.htm
http://ww2.whidbey.net/djdenham/Uncheck.htm
http://www.3feetunder.com/krick/startup/list.html

Enough for now?

Mike

 

PS you said "most of what I sent "!

In the case of the error it is important that you run RegCleaner and EasyClean just as I directed.

So do them all first!

Mike

 

Do all of the above.

But I do think that you should remove rotate and reseat the memory.

This is possibly a HW issue but that is not clear at this point.

You may also want to check with the maker of motherboad's web site for a BIOS revision. On the site they should tell how to check your current version.

Just because it is new is no garantee that the BIOS is completely up to date. It could have been warehoused or shelved for some time.

Most Mfg's provide a d/l of the latest BIOS.

Mike