• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Having weird PC problems

Status
Not open for further replies.

Ecrofirt

Member
So, where to begin with this.

Earlier today, a friend of mine brought his laptop over, and I hooked it up to my network so he could grab music quickly off my my PC. Setting him up on my network went easily enough, and soon he was copying files from my PC to his.

While he was copying music, I went to the same drive (f:\), and tried putting opening a file. I noticed the PC was acting a bit goofy, and when I tried to right-click the file I got some weird error that I've never seen before. I'd post what it said if I could remember, but the only thing I remember was that the error box was relatively small. When this happened, I had my friend finish his file transfer and I asked him to close his window to my PC. I then tried closing the window I was in, and explorer.exe game me an error and had to be shut down. I OKed this, and then restartted the PC. This is where the problems began.

Upon restarting, I noticed that some of my system tray icons weren't there (Catalyst Control Center, the Audgy 2 button for your sound, and my Norton Internet Security button). I manually opened Norton, only to find my security was marked as "Off", and Norton AntiVirus was listed as "Attention". I tried gonig to my Options for Internet Security, and I get this error: "You have insufficient privleges to complete this operation." Going to my Norton AntiVirus Options will actually open the window, but no matter how many times I click "Enable auto-protect", auto-protect never enables. I tried LiveUpdating Norton, and it won't allow me to download the the update, giving me this error: "LU1845: This Product prevented LiveUpdate from updating it"

Basically, it seems as though Norton thinks I'm not the administrator for NIS, even though I've tried this from both my login and the Administrator Windows account. I can't enable NIS, as it says I'm not logged in, and it won't let me log in at all.

As for my other system tray programs, I have no idea what happened to them. I've gone into msconfig, and the programs listed in my Startup area have changed. Noticably missing are ccApp which is a Norton product, and CLI.exe, which is for the Catalyst Control Center. I don't know how to go about adding these back, so I'm without them for now.

Does anyone know what could have happened?

I've run multiple virus scans with different programs since my friend has gone home, and I'm coming up virus-free. This problem is completely fucking with my head, and I've got no idea how to go about fixing it.
 
the driver?

And the odd thing about it, like I said, is that it isn't just affecting NIS. In the Startup area of my msconfig, different programs were selected than usual, and some programs were gone from the listing.

I'm still hoping I can find a solution for this. I've got Windows on a 10GB partition by itself, and I've got all my programs and data on another partition, but won't I still have to reinstall everything if I format my C drive and reinstall Windows?
 
Ecrofirt said:
the driver?

And the odd thing about it, like I said, is that it isn't just affecting NIS. In the Startup area of my msconfig, different programs were selected than usual, and some programs were gone from the listing.

I'm still hoping I can find a solution for this. I've got Windows on a 10GB partition by itself, and I've got all my programs and data on another partition, but won't I still have to reinstall everything if I format my C drive and reinstall Windows?
CCC comes with the radeon card drivers, so I called it "driver" :P
If you have everything backed up on another parition than you won't have to reinstall programs. BTW, try using windows restore to a previous date. I'm pretty sure windows makes them when it updates so even if you didn't make one there should still be one.
 
flsh said:
CCC comes with the radeon card drivers, so I called it "driver" :P
If you have everything backed up on another parition than you won't have to reinstall programs. BTW, try using windows restore to a previous date. I'm pretty sure windows makes them when it updates so even if you didn't make one there should still be one.
There's something borked about my system restore, at least after this mishap. It's saying I have no restore points before today at all, even thought I'm pretty sure Sypbot makes a restore point every Friday when it runs, and I'm nearly positive I've set restore points recently.

but as for the programs being "backed up", is that true? They're on other logical partitions. And if I format C and reinstall windows, won't that blank the registry, causing any programs that use it to stop working?
 
That's weird. I think the only thing left to do is to format and reinstall windows. Maybe someone else will know what to do, but I don't think there's anything left to try :\
 
dunno is this is worth posting since you're banned. but if you're using xp, just use the cd and use the fdisk program it comes with and only delete the partition that you have windows on. and then format that partition and reinstall. go nuts
 
flsh said:
That's weird. I think the only thing left to do is to format and reinstall windows. Maybe someone else will know what to do, but I don't think there's anything left to try :\

Carpet bombing a windows problem is usually the best solution.
 
Yea, I'm not usually one to recommend reinstalling Windows, but I just can't figure this problem out.

The startup section of my msconfig is batty, and some of my programs are missing from there. Norton is screwed up and won't let me turn on the firewall because it doesn't think I'm an administratoy. I'm getting odd errors every now and again with explorer.exe, and I'm just getting fed up with this shit.

I think something went wrong with Norton, and it's caused all these problems with everything else. Norton is such a pig that it's all over everything, and I think something with the registry got screwed up causing this.

So I'm on a Dell PC. It's my understanding that they don't give you a regular Windows disc. I've never had to reformat or reinstall Windows, so I'm pretty clueless to all of this. Here's how my PC is set up

C:\ (Windows)
D:\ (My Documents)
E:\ (Games and applications)
F:\ (data. Music/videos/visual studio projects)
W:\ (Cache / Temporary Internet files)
X:\ (Pagefile)

They're all logical partitions of my 160GB HDD.


So When I pop in this Windows disc, I'd imagine I want to reformat my C drive, and reinstall Windows on that. Now, as I said before, I'd imagine that this means that most of the programs on my E drive will no longer work, and I'll have to reinstall everything?

As I've said, I'm pretty new to all of this, so be gentle.
 
Ecrofirt said:
Yea, I'm not usually one to recommend reinstalling Windows, but I just can't figure this problem out.

The startup section of my msconfig is batty, and some of my programs are missing from there. Norton is screwed up and won't let me turn on the firewall because it doesn't think I'm an administratoy. I'm getting odd errors every now and again with explorer.exe, and I'm just getting fed up with this shit.

I think something went wrong with Norton, and it's caused all these problems with everything else. Norton is such a pig that it's all over everything, and I think something with the registry got screwed up causing this.

So I'm on a Dell PC. It's my understanding that they don't give you a regular Windows disc. I've never had to reformat or reinstall Windows, so I'm pretty clueless to all of this. Here's how my PC is set up

C:\ (Windows)
D:\ (My Documents)
E:\ (Games and applications)
F:\ (data. Music/videos/visual studio projects)
W:\ (Cache / Temporary Internet files)
X:\ (Pagefile)

They're all logical partitions of my 160GB HDD.


So When I pop in this Windows disc, I'd imagine I want to reformat my C drive, and reinstall Windows on that. Now, as I said before, I'd imagine that this means that most of the programs on my E drive will no longer work, and I'll have to reinstall everything?

As I've said, I'm pretty new to all of this, so be gentle.

Well, I'm not sure about your programs on your E drive, because I've always installed on C and backed up on E which is what I would recommend next time. But if you can still access a semi stable windows, I'd try and backup anything you have from those installed programs if you want to keep them. As for the Dell cd part, it might be setup different for when you pop it in during windows, but they're all the same when installing windows from booting from the cd. So boot from the cd and it'll take you through the reinstall and just format C: and you should be good.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom