Windows XP Computer Problems

We are having the following problems with our computer:
·Monitor screen goes black but then comes back on to desktop.
·Occasionally we get vertical green lines (about 8 lines) around our mouse pointer about ½" square in size.
·Desktop freezes and mouse arrow is missing. We have to shut off power to reboot and clear.
·Sometimes desktop freezes but mouse pointer can still be moved.
·While trying to run Win Doctor and Norton AntiVirus scans, the scans just stopped for no apparent reason.
·We finally got Norton AntiVirus scan to run and complete and all that it found was a couple of adware or spyware files which we deleted. One of the "threats" found had a file name of "dave.exe" and a threat name of "joke.idiot" but we deleted these with Norton without apparent problems.
·We have automatic Live Updates for our Norton AntiVirus program.
·We have been getting a lot of freezes while trying to run programs.

We installed Windows XP SP2 on December 1, 2004 but we did not have the above problems until the last couple of days.

We have run Spy Bot, which found no spyware and Ad Aware which found one spyware which we deleted.

Has anyone else had these kinds of problems? Is there a solution?

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

Hi jslow,

First thing I would suspect is the video card, can you by some chance put another one in to test that?

Does this happen in Safe mode? In msconfig there are various ways to startup - Diagnostic and Selective which load/don't basic drivers and processes, try those. Sort of a "hunt and peck" operation to pin this down.

Regards - Charles

 

I was guessing the same as charlesvar. You might try reducing your hardware acceleration and see if that does the trick. If so, try updating your video drivers. To reduce the acceleration, right click on the desktop>properties>settings>advanced>troubleshoot. Slide the slider bar all the way to the left. If the problem goes away, you can slide the bar to the right a notch or two and see if it's still ok. If so, increase it again. When you move the bar to a different notch take a look just below the bar. It'll tell you what each setting does.

 

Hi Arie, Charles & Zander,
Thanks for the replies.

Zander and Charles: We reduced the hardware acceleration on the video card.
We have the latest driver installed.

Arie: We posted a HighJackThis log and it was reported as being "pretty clean ". (See Spyware & Virus Removal Posts).
We did delete a "threat" found when we ran a Norton AntiVirus scan.
The threat had a file name of "dave.exe" and a threat name of "joke.idiot ".

We did not have as many problems today as we did yesterday. We still get an occasional black screen for a couple of seconds but then it clears and goes right back to the program. Also we get an occasional screen freeze up & we have to shut off power to reboot & clear.

We are going to continue with changing the hardware acceleration to see what happens.

 

Have a look in your event viewer and see if there's anything in there that might point to the problem.

Start>Run and type eventvwr.msc

 

Hi Zander,
I checked the event viewer but I'm not sure as to what to look for.

 

Check for any errors or warnings (both system and application logs) that happened at freeze time. Open any that look possible and read the detail.

 

Thanks Newt,

We got a lot of error messages for "Remote Access Connection Manager" because our telephone service is disabled.

Didn't see anything else unusual that may have caused the problem.

 

Since it worked fine after the SP2 install, and the problem came on rather suddenly, is doing a System Restore a practical option?

Johanna

 

Since adjusting the hardware acceleration on the video card and getting rid of the threat "dave.exe" found with a Norton Virus scan, things seem to have settled down.

Incidentally, we have also tried the new Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta program and it found spyware that was missed by Spy Bot & Ad Aware. Whether the removal of this additional spyware helped, we don't know.

Thanks
jslow

 

Thanks for letting us know! Now that you've gotten rid of the bugs you had you might try increasing your hardware acceleration again and see if it'll work for you. If not, what type of video card or on board chip do you have? If you have a branded card (Asus for example) you can try using the reference drivers for the chip that are available at the chip manufacturers website. For example, if you have a video card or on board video that has an ATI chip you can got to ATI's site and try the drivers that are available there. Same go's for Nvidia based chips. Just thought I'd mention it in case you weren't aware. Sometimes they'll work when the ones supplied by the card manufacturer won't.

 

Hi Zander,
We have a nVidia based chip and we noticed last night that Windows Update has a newer update for it. We'll probably give that a try.

Thanks
jslow

 

Hi jslow,

Off topic. Out of curiousity, who is We as in We have a nVidia based chip and we noticed last night....

Regards - Charles

 

Hi Charles,
Just a habit, I guess. When I write letters, I don't like to use I, I, I, all the time.

Since this computer is used by more than one person, I say we a lot.