I don't know what's happening

[AmericanBiznatch]

my computer has been running more or less perfectly for almost a full year now. i'm running windows xp home edition. all of a sudden many things have started to go wrong. i can't think of a single thing that i have changed that could have brought this on. my guess is that it has something to do with media player but i don't know how this could be. the only times that the computer has frozen has been when media player has been running. now when i try to open media player it says An Internal Application Error Has Occured. also, for some reason i can't do file searches anymore. the window opens when i go to Search, the annoying animated dog walks up and sits down and everything, but there is nothing above its head where the search field should be. it's all just blank. the little word bubble coming out of the dog is tiny and empty. also, windows help and support does not work anymore, it simply does not start. neither does the system restore feature.
any kind of help on any of these problems would be greatly appreciated. thank you.

[Nuclear Krusader]

Have you checked for virii as of late?

Here's a page to check your PC online for free:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

[Markoman01027]

Hello AmericanBiznatch,

Scan for Viruses, Trojans, and Spyware .

Defrag your system.

Run MSCONFIG and remove unwanted startup programs.

Update your Video Drivers.

Have you tried updating to the latest Media player?

Hope that helps!

[AmericanBiznatch]

nothing is helping. everything just seems to be progressively getting worse. i found a klez worm using spybot. downloaded a program to clean out the worm which it says it did. no problems are solved though. downloading new media players doesn't work. now internet explorer is messing up as well. hotmail keeps telling me that java is not enabled. when i can get into my inbox i can't delete any messages from the inbox page. if you hit delete the inbox relaods but the message is still there. i can only delete them if i go into the message and hit delete from there. i also can't move emails to different folders. using the drop menu thing that's supposed to move the messages around has no effect at all, new pages don't even load. when i try to go into the system restore thing from msconfig a blank window pops up. and that only happens occasionally. most of the time nothing happens at all.
am i permanently screwed? i really hope not, i have no money for professional repairs or new hardware.

[edge345]

Time to reformat and reinstall your programs. this time use norton anti-virus 2003 as soon as the operating system is installed and update norton every week....

your mail box most likely has the worm in it and just waiting for you to check your mail. so i would contact your internet provider and tell them to empty your mail box....

[AmericanBiznatch]

i don't understand how the worm would be in my mailbox. all that's there is old mail from people i know that i've already read. plus, when the problems began i was still able to use internet explorer correctly. it really is running as if java is disabled. which it is not as far as i know. i can't use the quickname thing when composing mail. and i am able to empty my mailbow by myself, just not from the inbox page. i have to go into each message individually and delete from there. but i've already read them all and they are all personal emails from people i know. so i don't know what's going on. but if i truly do need to reformat and reinstall, could you outline that process for me?
one problem might be that i don't seem to have the cd key for my XP disc anymore. i don't know if i will need this or not.
thank you.

[AmericanBiznatch]

i don't understand how the worm would be in my mailbox. all that's there is old mail from people i know that i've already read. plus, when the problems began i was still able to use internet explorer correctly. it really is running as if java is disabled. which it is not as far as i know. i can't use the quickname thing when composing mail. and i am able to empty my mailbow by myself, just not from the inbox page. i have to go into each message individually and delete from there. but i've already read them all and they are all personal emails from people i know. so i don't know what's going on. but if i truly do need to reformat and reinstall, could you outline that process for me?
one problem might be that i don't seem to have the cd key for my XP disc anymore. i don't know if i will need this or not.
thank you.

[AmericanBiznatch]

as a side note: hotmail and everything else online functions perfectly if i use netscape. it's only explorer that seems to malfunction. i'm so confused.

[KHT]

First I would run a good virus scan. After I`m convinced the system is clean it`s time to clean things up.

Click start\search (C: drive) type, [*.tmp,~*.*], exactly like that (no brackets) and delete everything that is found regardless of the warning messages.

Next, search for cookies and delete all cookies.

Clean up the registry. download Reg Cleaner at http://www.jv16.org/ and clean out orphaned files and OLE.

If after all this if you still decide to reinstall you can recover your product CD key by downloading and running AIDA32 from http://www.aida32.hu/aida32.php

These are all free products and I`ve used them on W98\2000\XP machines for some time without any probs.

AIDA32 is particularly useful and a godsend when I need to familiarize myself with a machine I`ve never been on before.

[roninrmz]

i am experiencing the same thing how can i fix it

[Nuclear Krusader]

You should open a new thread with your problem. This one is quite old.

[Corky]

Rather than waiting on Aida32, just get Magic Jelly Bean Keyfinder (search Google). Small program, will pull your key right up.

Face it, it's time to re-install. I do it at most every 6 months. Get that "new car smell" back. Just back up the files you need that you haven't already backed up, set BIOS to boot from CD, throw in XP, and do it.

[Panama Red]

TIME OUT! This thread was reopened by roninrmz because he has the same problem. Let's let him open a new thread rather than give advice to a 3 month old problem that may or may not exist any longer. And, on a side note, nuke and pave is the last resort to fix a problem, in my book. I've saved way too many systems without wiping it clean to promote that as an early on recommendation.

[glc]

Try a 15 month old problem.