Strange Behavior From Windows

[Alaric]

I usually try to sort out my OS issues on my own , but this is strange. Every program I download to my HDD is "corrupted" or the signature is "corrupted" according to Win 7 (HP x64). If I download it to a USB drive I just get the signature corruption warning. Either way , nothing will install unless I download it on another computer and then install it from the flash drive. . Tonight I got this bizarre message:



Since when does Windows state "Thus , it was deleted" ? Thus ??? WTF. Malwarebytes , MSE and Hitman Pro come up with nothing and I can't find anything in App Data or either of the Program Files folders. My install takes up 330 GB and I really don't want to go through every folder and file. Has anybody here seen this before ? Itried a new version of Windows Installer but-It won't install because it's "corrupted".

 

[Zuzzz]

While you AV software says "no" I think you have some kind of nasty in there. Along with the weird comment in the error message I notice the traffic cone icon in the corner. I dont recall MS using such an icon in that way. The VLC-2.1.5 file it refers too seems to be (if legit) a 3rd party media player. With that being said you may have introduced this with a fake flash player update or the like. I hope this helps and g/l.

Z

 

[pcgamer4life]

Agreed with above. That's not a Windows sanctioned error message. You've got a virus, malware, or some overzealous piece of bloatware (something like a SUPER DOWNLOAD ACCELERATOR PLUS!!!11!), that is giving you issues. Reboot in safe mode and attempt to install something. If it works, then you can probably get by with removing whatever the offending software is (though, with a "330gb install" of Windows, it might be a chore to find it). If that doesn't work, you've probably got deeper issues that the quickest solution will be a format/reinstall of Windows.

 

[RollingThunder]

Alaric,

Just as another check, install Malwarebytes Anti-rootkit beta:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/downloads/#tools

Reboot in safe mode and see if it finds anything.

 

[mimart7]

I would also run chkdsk /f on that disk, too. But I would look into running combofix, http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/. Read the directions before you run it.

 

[kyfire]

The error msg you posted is from VLC Media Player not Windows.

 

[pcgamer4life]

The error msg you posted is from VLC Media Player not Windows.

You sure about that? The traffic cone icon is the one VLC uses, but I can't imagine that VLC is actually causing this issue. The only thing I can think of is may his PC is set to try to open .exe files with VLC, but even then, it would almost certainly handle that a bit more gracefully than the error in the OP.

 

[Alaric]

I got that error message when trying to update VLC media player , so it would make sense if that's the program that generated it. IE 11 is acting strange today (slow , seems confused LOL) Malwarebytes Anti Rootkit Beta was one of the programs that wouldn't download or run. I ran Kaspersky TDSS Killer and it found nothing.
I don't think it was an update that did it. All my programs are set to manually check for updates. I pick the website and download , not the software. I'd like to avoid a reinstall. Finding the issues and fixing them teaches me things , and just the M$ updates from the SP 1 install takes hours. Lots of hours. Then there is video , pictures , documents , and all the programs , and a couple large games , and....My Documents is 22.5 GB alone. Video is 84.4 GB Process Explorer says svchost is using craploads of memory at random times too. I'll boot in safe mode with networking and see if I can run the MB Anti Rootkit. And run chkdsk on reboot. I ran the system file checker and it found no integrity violations. I'll run that again in safe mode.

 

[pcgamer4life]

I got that error message when trying to update VLC media player , so it would make sense if that's the program that generated it.

You said in your OP that every program you tried running generates that error, is that still the case? If the error is unique to that particular VLC install file, then that's probably an isolated issue. If it happens when you attempt to launch or install other programs, that suggests malware or a virus.

 

[Alaric]

I'm sorry , I wasn't very clear about the source of all the error messages. Most of them are Windows pop ups telling me that either the download is corrupt or the install .exe is corrupt and Windows can't install. I was able to install some things from a flash drive (Catalyst driver package) , but others just won't do it. New version of HWMonitor and large game update wouldn't run but I did get Malwarebytes Anti Rootkit Beta to run finally. I had to install it to the flash drive instead of the default desktop. And it claims my system is clean.
I will say that if there is something hiding in my rig , it could well be something like a keylogger or such. I have a relative (in-law) who is prone to identity theft and credit card fraud.

 

[Zuzzz]

Here is a long shot. See if you some how associated exe files with VLC. if so vlc will kick an error as the file is not a media file and thus corrupt. However the fact the file was 'deleted' still raises questions.

Z

 

[c627627]

Partition the hard drive and install Windows onto a relatively small partition. Store no personal files on Windows C: drive, install large apps and games not to C:\Program Files but to some other drive... Move Desktop, etc. away from C drive too.

Image Windows after you set everything just like you like it to be.

This will not be the first and only time something like this happens and when it happens next time, it's so much easier to nuke and reimage Windows partition in under 3 minutes.

 

[TransformedBG]

Back up everything you want.. and start fresh.. thats what i always do in the event of weird stuff happeing.. makes my life a little easier plug gives my pc a "fresh" start

 

[Alaric]

Partition the hard drive and install Windows onto a relatively small partition. Store no personal files on Windows C: drive, install large apps and games not to C:\Program Files but to some other drive... Move Desktop, etc. away from C drive too.

Image Windows after you set everything just like you like it to be.

This will not be the first and only time something like this happens and when it happens next time, it's so much easier to nuke and reimage Windows partition in under 3 minutes.

This ^. I very much like this method.
I very much want to know what happened when my OS gets wonky (It's usually my fault) so that A) I don't do it again , and B) Rebuilding it from scratch sucks , and C) I just have a terrible curiosity about broken things-I like to fix them.
Rebuilding from the ground up also takes time and my PC is one of my favorite toys. I hate not having it running the way I like , or not at all. 300 GB. Sheesh ! I may install the OS on the small (750 GB) HDD , though , and use the newer 2 TB HDD for all the junk I listed that is a pain to migrate.

 

[c627627]

It took me four days to install Windows 98 just like I like it to be.
When I had to spend four more days doing it, I switched to imaging.

Now I reimage at least once a month (reimage before installing Patch Tuesday updates - image again after installing them) and after implementing small changes to the image I wrote in a txt file that needed to be made. Images are stored on a completely different hard drive for faster imaging and reimaging.

And being organized like that makes it easier to figure out what went wrong in case you have to go back to an image from a couple of months ago.

My multi boot uses OS partitions no larger than 35 GB. Mt Windows XP is 30GB, the rest are 35GB SSD partitions.


On my quadruple boot, Windows 7/XP/8/Vista, I use E:\Program Files XP and E:\Program Files 7 and E:\Program Files Vista as folders to install large programs into so that imaging is faster when I reimage the respective OS partitions.

 

[Alaric]

Nice! I'm sold on the idea. My 750 GB is faster anyway (7200 RPM vs 5400 RPM) , so I can install on that and build at my leisure. I had told myself that next time , I'll have an image of W7 with all the updates and current hardware drivers , with everything at default settings. Then another with my 3rd party programs installed and the whole thing tweaked the way I like it. And since storing TB no longer entails property taxes and utilities , it will be cheap to have a reference OS and my 24/7 build.
To add to my happiness , I think I've narrowed my problems to the graphics card or the drivers. I'll try rolling back the drivers and see what happens.

 

[c627627]

Small SSDs are cheap but provide a tremendous increase in speed when using Windows. It is one of the most important investments for your rig. You can only have Windows installed on them and things would be (much) faster than on 7200 RPM mechanical hard drives. Consider that.

Also, since I can remember, there comes a point for old video cards, when installing newer drivers for them may not be a good idea because you sacrifice stability for video card driver updates mostly geared towards newer video cards, not older ones. For very old video cards, I used to know which driver update was the last good update for them.

 

[Alaric]

My graphics card is pretty recent , and AMD lists it for the current drivers. I've had issues with AMD Catalyst drivers (me and a few million others) but the current package seems to have solved a bunch of problems for users so I hesitated to blame them first. Now , however , I'm getting display failure and recovery error messages. I'm about to do as clean a removal of all the AMD drivers as I can and try a fresh install of them.

 

[wagex]

if you suspect something nasty best thing ive ever used is combofix. boot in safe mode with networking, run explorer.exe from the command line then run it off of a flash drive. it finds alot of stuff and fixes alot of problems... disclaimer, it has been reported to nuke windows... never has happened to me yet but just throwing that out there.

 

[shadowdr]

There is a new type of rootkit out there that resides in memory. It usually stays in C/users/appdata/local, hides after startup and rewrites itself on reboot. It is very hard to find and delete, I used Rouge Killer and found it but after the first reboot it would only bluescreen when it ran. It runs a bunch of svchost.exe's, way more then normal. I found a program from Norton that would run and delete the files after a few days of searching. The program was called symhelp, hope it help if that is what you got., usually it comes from E-mail.