Preparing to Fix a family members computer

[Bry Man]

Hi,

My dads cousin has been recently having troubles with his computer and has asked me for help since im quite adept in comps and the such, I agreed of course because there was pay mentioned.

Anyways to make sure that I could tackle the issue more effectively I thought id get multiple opinions on the matter, He described to me only briefly what the problem was and I have never been inside his house and on his computer before, He said that whenever his kids would go on the computer to chat rooms and aol related things the computer would "lock up" or "shut down" he also claims to be fairly illeterate with computers so I took it as It was just freezing.

My first guess would be that his computer has been heavily infested with spyware or has caught some sort of virii, in which case I already have Ad-Aware and Spy Bot S&D on my thumbdrive, I am wondering If I should also get some sort of virus detection program, I have heard bad things about norton so any other suggestion would be best (free is a plus).

As for it being a hardware problem I am assuming its a fairly new computer that is premanufactured, most likely running an Xp product.

Any Opinions, suggestions or additional tools for solving the problems are appreciated as I hope to be abe to fix his problems the first time effectively

[sweenster]

nine times out of ten any problems are caused by programs running that shouldnt be running - i.e. viruses.

As a virus guard I recommend AVG virus from www.grisoft.com - its completely free and kicks Norton's a*se.

Fairly easy to sort this:
1) Run adaware (as you said)
2) Install AVG and do a virus scan
3) go into HKLM>software>microsoft>currentversion>run key in registry and remove all the unnecessary programs from the startup list.
4) check startup folder in start menu for similar.
5) Type "services.msc" in the run box on start menu (XP only) and disable any services running that shouldnt be (like Messenger or whatever)
6) Go to windowsupdate.microsoft.com and allow it to scan your system for required updates. Download & install these.

restart computer and u should be sorted!

[whackaxe]

startup can be more easily configured if you type "msconfig" (withut quote please) in the run box. try running ad-aware and AVG BEFORE you disable these. a friend of mien disabled somethings on startup, ran ad-aware put back startup pograms, and it got reinfected

[sweenster]

you can use MSCONFIG but it doesnt remove the value from the registry - it just moves it into a key called "Run-"

With regards to reinfection, a lot of viruses automatically check to see that they are still listed in the startup key when the computer shuts down. to counteract this, you can press CTRL+ALT+DEL to go through the list of processes and close them down, or alternatively once you have deleted the values from the registry shut the computer down straight away by switching it off at the mains rather than by the shutdown command.

It also helps, if a value is listed in the registry to find the file on your hard disk and delete it.

[sweenster]

Actually, while we're on this subject I was dealing with a rather sneaky virus the other day that automatically changed the dial up internet settings. It put "c:\windows\system32\explorer.exe -go -c26 -w" as a registry key.

I removed this and the problem was gone but what do the "-go -c26 -w" delimiters actually do? I tried searching google for this but no luck. Think the virus was called Acid Battery or something.

[sage45]

The delimiters were specific to the version of explorer that was being used. The only way to really know what they mean is to tear that specific file apart... ;)

-sage-

[sweenster]

thought it might be something like that. i ended up running system file checker just in case.

Thats another useful tip:

5b) Go to run and type in "sfc /scannow" to run the windowsXP system file checker

[Bry Man]

Hmm thanks for the suggestions, as for deleting the registry entries im not very hip to doing that, I could but its not my computer so I dont want to mess anything up, Of course I could always make a back up I suppose

[sweenster]

as for deleting the registry entries im not very hip to doing that, I could but its not my computer so I dont want to mess anything up, Of course I could always make a back up I suppose

sorry mate - you'll have to learn quickly!

Dont worry about deleting anything in the run key - all it controls is the programs that run when windows starts. It doesnt really matter if you delete a line from here as all you have to do is click on the link in the start menu to run the program instead.

If you delete any windows processes from the run key, windows will automatically detect it and replace the key upon next start up so dont worry.