explorer.exe error any way to fix it?

[Capt Fiero]

My Story. Kinda Funny. Or just skip down a paragraph to get to the meat of the issue.

Well Everything was going great, new SATA HD, New MB life was cooking. Till I got the urge to play some "Dope Wars" I downloaded it, and installed it. Oops it had spyware attached to it. Our comes Spybot Search and Destroy, next up to bat Ad-Aware 6.0.................... Jesh there seems to be a lot of spyware on my system, I bet the computer is going to run much better once all these "REG" files are gone. HeHeHe. They cant be important can they they are just REG files. Ok all done. All Clean now lets just see how fast the machine is now.

click click click CRAAAAAAAASH, explorer.exe has recoverd from a fatal error. Push Ok to terminate the program or cancell to attempt to debug.............................................



OK Back to regular posting now.



Well that is my holiday story. Now I am getting errors. I really dont want to formate the machine again. Main reason being my new HD is so big that I no longer have room on other drives to back up the entire contents of it. I am going to have to delete about 5 gig of movies that I painfully ripped from a DV Camera.


Is there anyway to repair explorer.exe while still running inside windows. It seems to lock up the most when I am doing photo editing. Or running my external USB 2.0 HD. I can play UT2K3 for hours without issue and run office 2003 fine. But it seem like certain small things make it crash.

Anybody got any suggestions.

 

[redduc900]

Spybot S&D has a Recovery option, which you can use to undo any changes the program made to the Registry and other files. Ad-Aware 6.0 also has the Quarantine feature, which allows you to restore any quarantined objects that were removed. The default for the Quarantine feature is to "Auto-Quarantine" any and all removed objects, which means that any objects removed by the user can be restored to their original location.

 

[racecar12]

What OS? XP has its own recovery feature being able to go back in time to a known good reg.

 

[Capt Fiero]

Well I did the restore and it seemed to have repaired it. But I guess all the spy ware is back now too.

 

[racecar12]

While surfing, there is a pop up window that I have noticed that says "your system may have spyware. download spyhunter to check your system". I know my system does not contain spyware and I use a firewall that will ask me if any app tries to access the internet. So, I control what accesses the internet. It is free for home use. If you don't have a software firewall, go to zdnet.com downloads, and search for "sygate" which offers a free personal firewall. It will want you to register after a certain amount of time, but you can have it remind you later. And as long as you don't restart your system, it will remain functioning properly. EDIT: Just meaning it wont remind you till you restart again. I plan on purchasing the firewall sometime in the future, and the pop up reminder is not much of a problem.

Also look in your add/remove programs and see if you find anything that says gator. Remove that program, for it is know to contain spyware. Before you dl a firewall, go to grc.com and do a shields up to see if you have any open ports. I guarantee after you dl sygate, you will be completely stealth with the exception of port80.

 

[Capt Fiero]

I am behind a hardware firewall already The only ports that are open are 80 and 21 thanks for the tips though. I dont want anything like Zone Alarm anywhere near my computer. I am assuming taht sygate is something like that.

 

[racecar12]

An hardware firewall is good, but to be completely safe, you should use a software firewall also, IMPO. Sygate is not like zone alarm and is not confusing at all. It will warn you if any folder or app tries to access the internet and you can either allow the app or folder to access or not per that event or check a box to remember to access or not. Very simple progy to use. If you don't like it you can always remove it and find another software firewall.

Here is the link on zdnet for the firewall. But just for kicks with your hardware firewall intact, go to grc.com to see how your shields up is holding before dl and running sygate.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2092-10247416.html?tag=lst-0-1

I am also behind a hardware firewall. Don't completely trust the hardware firewall unless you are sure you have it configured properly through your router and doubled checked.

r12

 

[Capt Fiero]

Port 21 and 80 came up as open
Port 119 and 135 came up as stealth
All other ports came up as closed or non existant. Running the sheilds up service. With just my router.

 

[Capt Fiero]

Ok I ran the test with sygate running and it cam up exactly the same as without it.

I am noting that shields up can not tell which computer it is scanning. All it can tell is that at my IP which is the router IP that Port 80 is open as well as port 21. My personal computer has those blocked. I have 5 computers on my network at home. Only one of them has any ports open to the public and that is my server.

You are right this sygate is not too bad. Just as long as it is not as much of a pain in the a$$ as Zone Alame was. It caused way to many problems on a couple of machines.

 

[racecar12]

That is pretty good. I show all ports as stealth while using sygate. My other personal preference for a software firewall is conceal pc firewall. But have grown to like sygate better due to the fact that it will see a deep imbeded folder try to access the internet and ask you if you would like it to access or not.

The reason I am pushing this software firewall is that you may not have the spyware as detected. With owning mutiple pc's, I see alot of action between the systems. After getting the pop-up ad saying that I may have spyware, I dl spyhunter and checked and it showed me alot of bs that was on my system. I know for a fact that there is no spyware and was on a fresh os with nothing more than updateds. I personally think that the owners of spyhunter or other diagnotic spy checking progys are preying on our paranoia so as to dl and buy their software. The internet is a cruel place and a great means to scare people into purchasing software they don't need. Using this firewall can eleminate some of your worries.

 

[Capt Fiero]

Well the errors came back so I just said to Hell with it. I wanted to partition that 120gig into a 40 and an 80 anyway. So I backed up to 4 diffrent small drives and then formated and reloaded everything. The computer is working better than ever right now. Thanks for the Tips Guys.