PC Repair! Update: 10-29-06

Post by **bicostp** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:17 pm

I'm trying to fix my cousin's PC. Most of the problems have been fixed, but there is still one issue that has me puzzled.

Whenever you log into the thing (it doesn't matter which username you use), it runs the InstallShield Wizard for WordPerfect Office 12. It "gathers required information...", and gets to the point where it asks for the install CD. I click cancel, and it spits back an error and closes. Then the process repeats a couple times before it finally gives up. Sometimes the Sonic disc burning software does the same thing.

The cause is all the crapware he installs and uninstalls. He goes to these random websites and uses random demos and junkware such as "JoZ EZ PSP Movie Converta". When the demo expires (or he realizes the program is garbage), he uninstalls and reinstalls another program.

I can't erase it and reinstall, because it is running Media Center edition, and I only have Professional (and the system came with no restore discs).

Any ideas?

Hardware specs:
Dell Dimension E510
3.0 Ghz Pentium 4
256 MB RAM
60(?) GB HD
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition

What I have done to fix it so far:

- Removed PC-Cillin, replaced with AVG Free. (Shaved almost 5 minutes off the boot time)
- Installed AVG Antivirus, scanned and removed 5 trojans PC-Cillin missed
- Reinstalled / updated Ad-Aware, removed 300 or so cookies
- Installed CCleaner, removed over a gig of garbage
- CHKDSK a couple times
- Defrag
- Removed numerous junkware programs
- Installed MediaCoder
- Removed all System Restore points (because they contained backups of said trojans)

Grand total so far:

3 GB more free disk space
-15 minutes boot time (from 16 minutes from power on to useable to under 2)
3 hours' work
+ $75 for me ($25/hour )

More info later, I'm in class now.

vb_master · Post by **vb_master** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:26 pm

Call and ask for some restore discs. You can check the HDD and see if they loaded the files to a separate partition though, that's what my laptop has.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:28 pm

Did you try disabling the programs in msconfig? I cleared up some annoying programs with that.

sameguy · Post by **sameguy** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:46 pm

well if worse come to worse .. Just simply use a system restore. That should work.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:46 pm

15 minute boot time!? Well, something is clearly wrong. I'd say, back up important stuff, and restore.

EDIT: Wait, when did he get that PC, you could use Dells built in system restore by symatec or something like that. I think alt F8 enters it, i forget. Check Dell's site. If you need restore cds, they'll send em, they saved my butt. I got a screen and restore cds in one day from them. They have good service

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 5:51 pm

Harshboy wrote:15 minute boot time!? Well, something is clearly wrong. I'd say, back up important stuff, and restore.

Yeah, even at its worst my computer takes less than 10 minutes to boot and load a user, its about 5 now. More ram could help, my computer is slower than that one but has 512mb of ram (using 680mb right now with 3 accounts logged on), and its running xp home, media center has to use more.

Post by **bicostp** » Wed Oct 18, 2006 7:27 pm

vskid wrote:Did you try disabling the programs in msconfig? I cleared up some annoying programs with that.

I disabled and removed about 30 processes, but nothing stops these setup installers from loading.

sameguy wrote:well if worse come to worse .. Just simply use a system restore. That should work.

As I stated previously, I deleted all the old system restore points because they were infected. Besides, System Restore does a half-butt job in my opinion. I've never fixed anything by using it.

vb_master wrote:You can check the HDD and see if they loaded the files to a separate partition though, that's what my laptop has.

Maybe they did. I'll have to try.

Harshboy wrote:15 minute boot time!? Well, something is clearly wrong. I'd say, back up important stuff, and restore.

EDIT: Wait, when did he get that PC, you could use Dells built in system restore by symatec or something like that. I think alt F8 enters it, i forget. Check Dell's site. If you need restore cds, they'll send em, they saved my butt. I got a screen and restore cds in one day from them. They have good service

He got it in January. Now, do you hit Alt-F8 before the Windows logo, as though you were booting into Safe Mode? Normally my solution for really screwed up systems is to reformat and reinstall. Haven't done system restore things much before. I don't trust 'em.

Yes, it took over 15 minutes to get to a useable Desktop. (By "useable" I mean it takes less than 5 seconds to do anything.)

It's still not as bad as one PC I fixed when I worked at a repair center. A family brought their computer in for service because it was ungawdly slow. The problem is, their 8 year old daughter installed everything "Harry Potter" she could find; everything from wallpaper animations to games to screen savers...

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 2:03 am

I use two programs to speed up the computers I work on. Spybot-S&D, and Registry Mechanic.

Spybot is a free Malware remover, and Registry Mechanic is a registry cleaner. This helps GREATLY with boot times... and everything else really. It's not free, however. I think it costs like... $30. I wouldn't know... I've never bought it. Shhh!!! Please don't turn me in to the software people!

These two programs are usually all I need to run. I also always install Firefox, and a few add-ons.

Fasterfox (Extension)
Colorful Tabs (Extension)
Google Toolbar (Extension)
ForecastFox (Extension)
Minifox Flat (Theme)

I've done this routine to six different computers. Two of my own and four of different family members. Works like a charm every time.

Give it a shot. I sounds like you'll have to do more than that... but this is a start.

Edit: I forgot a good one. I use it to remove stuborn startup programs. It's called Startup Control Panel and you can get it here for free. It a small, simple program, but it will take those friggin' startup programs right out of your registry in a second. There's lots of things in there that you probably won't know what they are. And a lot of them are important and shouldn't be removed either. Just Google the names of the unknown programs, and your first result will probably be something from www.liutilities.com. They've got a nice database up startup programs that they expect you to use for they're own software... that costs money.

Example: Google search for ctfmon.exe

Nucklez · Post by **Nucklez** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 7:11 am

Once a computer gets that infested with Spyware, it's very hard to clean it up. Truthfully, it will never be like new again. He could possibly have 100's of applications working against you that constantly reinstall themselves. If you absolutly can't get Dell's restore CD, backup and reinstall everything then try this.

Install Spybot as someone else mentioned, then update it's definitions. Don't even worry about scanning yet. Next install AVG's free antivirus tool (if they still offer the free one) and update it's definitions. I would recommend doing that even if the pc has a virus scanner on it, that scanner could've been corrupted by all of the crap that has been installed.

Reboot into safemode without the network!!!!!!! Run the scans in safemode! That way, all of the spyware and viruses have a lesser chance of reinstalling themselves. After the scans are complete, reboot into safe mode again, and run the scans again just to make sure that nothing is back. Keep doing that until both scans come up clean.

As for the Office disks, if he doesn't have the office disks available then search the hard drive to see if the Office install is located on the hard drive. I do this because MS Office always asks for the install CDs when a new profile is setup. I'm guessing WordPerfect does the same thing, or it has simply been damaged by the uninstalls. A trick to searching for the Office install is to search for the first part of the file it mentions when it asks you to insert the disk. The part before the "." The install disks compress the files, and if the install looks for something like winword.dll the file it is really looking for could be windowd.d_ In that instance I would just search for "windord." without the quotes. If you can't find it, then your sh*@ out of luck! I would recommend looking for another copy of WordPerfect Office whatever, or upgrading it. Then keep up with the install CDs!!!! Office products are as bad as Windows now by needing the original CDs.

Edit: You will also still need to clean up your startup programs too. I would recommend using the programs mentioned above for that as well.

Also, check his RAM. 15 minutes to boot is insane! I know this sounds low but make sure he has at least 256Mb, and that is PUSHING it!!!! 512mb should actually be the minimun to WinXP IMO.

xelion · Post by **xelion** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 4:35 pm

Nucklez wrote:Once a computer gets that infested with Spyware, it's very hard to clean it up. Truthfully, it will never be like new again. He could possibly have 100's of applications working against you that constantly reinstall themselves. If you absolutly can't get Dell's restore CD, backup and reinstall everything then try this.

Install Spybot as someone else mentioned, then update it's definitions. Don't even worry about scanning yet. Next install AVG's free antivirus tool (if they still offer the free one) and update it's definitions. I would recommend doing that even if the pc has a virus scanner on it, that scanner could've been corrupted by all of the crap that has been installed.

Reboot into safemode without the network!!!!!!! Run the scans in safemode! That way, all of the spyware and viruses have a lesser chance of reinstalling themselves. After the scans are complete, reboot into safe mode again, and run the scans again just to make sure that nothing is back. Keep doing that until both scans come up clean.

As for the Office disks, if he doesn't have the office disks available then search the hard drive to see if the Office install is located on the hard drive. I do this because MS Office always asks for the install CDs when a new profile is setup. I'm guessing WordPerfect does the same thing, or it has simply been damaged by the uninstalls. A trick to searching for the Office install is to search for the first part of the file it mentions when it asks you to insert the disk. The part before the "." The install disks compress the files, and if the install looks for something like winword.dll the file it is really looking for could be windowd.d_ In that instance I would just search for "windord." without the quotes. If you can't find it, then your sh*@ out of luck! I would recommend looking for another copy of WordPerfect Office whatever, or upgrading it. Then keep up with the install CDs!!!! Office products are as bad as Windows now by needing the original CDs.

Edit: You will also still need to clean up your startup programs too. I would recommend using the programs mentioned above for that as well.

Also, check his RAM. 15 minutes to boot is insane! I know this sounds low but make sure he has at least 256Mb, and that is PUSHING it!!!! 512mb should actually be the minimun to WinXP IMO.

If you read his post, he gave the amount of ram and alreayd said he installed AVG.

Persoanlly, if a computer is that screwed, I'd just start over and reformat it all. Did you use CCleaners' registry checker thing?

And yeah, I'd install Spybot as well, it can catch things Ad Aware miss.

MSconfig, get rid of the programs, you said you did, but you might also get rid of the services you don't need. Turn them all off and it will boot up in a simi-safe mode config, if you fix the problem, something is probably in there, just figure it out.

Have you tried going into Add/remove programs and get rid of all the stuff he doesn't need? What about just deleting WordPerfect alltogether?

If none of that fixes it, I'd say just format and reinstall Windows. And tell him to upgrade his ram

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 4:55 pm

What is this about wordperfect/office? I didn't see that in any of his posts. He doesn't have the XP Media Center disks, thats the problem. If he did say something about not having Office disks, just use OpenOffice, I use that because it would have been a hastle to put Office XP back on after reformatting.

Ari · Post by **Ari** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 5:01 pm

Just install some form of Linux (like Gentoo) on it... that'll fix all of his problems!

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 5:15 pm

Ok, here's the facts everyone seems to be missing.

WordPerfect keeps running the InstallShield Wizard every time you do anything. I'm deleting it and installing either MS Office XP, or OpenOffice.

I installed CCleaner, it helped a lot. I installed AVG. It's much better at catching stuff then PC-cillin ever was.

This machine has 256 MB of RAM. If he pays, I'll upgrade to at least 512 (most likely to a gig)

I would reinstall, but he uses the Media Center stuff a lot and I don't have Media Center Edition discs.

Ari wrote:Just install some form of Linux (like Gentoo) on it... that'll fix all of his problems!

I would but he'd kill me.

xelion · Post by **xelion** » Thu Oct 19, 2006 9:41 pm

What is the difference between Media Center and Pro? And if you really had too... *cough*LOL ISOZ LOL*cough*

So have you already deleted Word Perfect and it's still popping up? Did you try to disable services like I said in my first post? What about starting in safemode? Does it still do it then?

Post by **bicostp** » Sat Oct 21, 2006 9:56 am

Media Center is Professional Edition with some extra software taht lets you run videos and stuff with a remote.

I just ran AMUST Registry Cleaner (yay majorgeeks.com!) and it found 1281 issues that need to be fixed! Most were in the components subsystem (1200). Most are invalid or misformed class identifiers, invalid interfaces, and invalid type libraries.

Fix them all time!

If this doesn't fix the WordPerfect issue, it will be removed and replaced with OpenOffice 2.0.

EDIT: I ran a few more small utilities (disabling startup items, tweaks, etc...) and it boots up even faster now! yey!

Time to figure out why the CD drive is screwy.

EDIT 2: Both setup programs no longer spaz out on login, but I inadvertantly removed all the desktop shortcuts created by setup programs. At least that's an easy fix!