wrong forum, i know, i know...but

[dweller]

if any computer savvy techies would be so kind as to read and give me some advice, or someone with a star could post the below over in computer group, i'd be very appreciative.
the problem(s) follow:

a few weeks ago, i brought home a cd with a pic on it that my dad wanted reduced (10mb or something) to an emailable size. When i popped it in one of my drives, then the other both drives acted like there was NOT a cd in the drive. I noticed when we were burning the cd on his comp. that some message came up about needing a certain reader to read the cd, but i figured ..not a problem.

So, i ended up opening the box, checking all cables, and rebooting. It was fine after that for a few days. Whenever i tried to read a cd, or burn one, no problems. Then the a: drive (floppy) started the same thing. I uninstalled the device (control panel) and rebooted, and it re-installed and worked again. Then recently, all 3 drives, floppy and both cd, started doing the same thing again. I uninstalled, rebooted, they reinstalled and were fine again.

Today i went to hook up my digital camera...sigh. Same problem with that now. And all 3 above drives saying the same thing, but now uninstalling and rebooting is not working.

Win2000 system. I have AVG virus check and it's updated and not seeing anything. I am currently dl'ing current Norton av updates to check again (altho AVG usually finds what Norton does not).

The only other behavior i'm noticing is on reboot, winlogon.exe seems to run forever (several minutes as opposed to seconds) which makes me think something ugly is on my beater. Sigh.

Has anyone ever had this problem, or know what else to do about it? It's strange that drives a: d: and e: would just quit recognizing and now the digital camera (usb g: drive) too. The camera was working fine 2 weeks ago when last used and pics were uploaded.

many thanks for any advice.

dp

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

1. Have you checked your Bios setup ?

Have you checked and seen if any of these devices have been " disabled " by mistake ? BTW : I think you can post this in the computer forum yourself :)

[dweller]

2. thanks

i'll check the bios.

but, no i have recently run out of star, so can't post over in the groups...

thanks again.
dp

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

3. No problem :)

I posted your thread in the computer forum in the DU groups .

[dweller]

5. thank you so much!

i checked the bios, everything is recognized, on, etc.

dp

[Onlooker]

4. You might have a virus

I have a well-guarded computer and am quite good with computers, but about a year ago my computer started doing weird shit. I called Dell, who basically told me to reformat the hard disk. Since I didn't want to to do that, I called Microsoft tech support. Though it cost me $35, they did a superb job at isolating and correcting the problem. Indeed, the problem was a virus that was not detected by Norton anti-virus. I think you either have a virus or one of the system files is corrupt.

[dweller]

6. yeah, me too

i've run through the hardware wizard, etc. All devices working properly.

tried to install my camera software again in 'add new software' , direct it to the cd drive, again. . . 'insert cd'

it's with all the drives, sigh. .. luckily it's still recognizing hard drives at this point.

getting ready to run norton w/ latest update.

thanks
dp

[dweller]

7. a gentle but curious

:kick:

for the late nite tech savvy crew.

dp

[dweller]

8. another prod

w/ a boot :kick:

dp

[dweller]

9. .

:(

[KitchenWitch]

10. Does Windows 2000 have the System Restore utility?

If so, try that, setting it for well before you brought the disc home.

[dweller]

15. not sure if it does

will check after running scans, etc.

if anyone knows if Win2000 has restore, please chime in.

dp

[aeolian]

49. No. System Restore (or rollback, whatever) was introduced in XP

[Madrone]

11. A great virus - checker....

Since most viruses immediately render antivirus software D-E-A-D, it can be difficult to figure out if you have one. A resource I use (and that has saved my ass a number of times when working on computers that would have otherwise been formatted) is Panda's online virus scan. It usually finds things Norton does not - and most importantly it REMOVES any viruses it may find.

You have to use IE - as it needs activeX crap to run - but go here:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/

[dweller]

13. thanks

running it now.

dp

[dweller]

19. zip, no virus

on scan.

dp

[Onlooker]

12. I don't think your description of the problem is very clear

Back up your files!

At any rate, since the problem is affecting 3 components, you might look and see what they have in common. Are they all on the same ribbon cable? Try replacing that.

What board are they connected to? That board could be wearing out. Are there alternative connection you can use?

Try gently and thoroughly vacuuming the inside of your computer. Dust can cause a computer to stop working. If it's very dusty, use both compressed air and a vacuum. Hold the vacuum above the board to suck up the dust that the compressed air forces out.

Reinstall the operating system, or as someone else suggested use an early restore point if your version of Windows offers System Restore.

If you can, do a search on your system for all files from the day before the problem first started. See if you can spot an odd file.

If you can see what processes are running (I don't think Win 2000 supports that), go to www.sysinfo.org and look up each process. See if any of the processes could be viruses.

[dweller]

14. sorry that it's not clear

each component has failed to recognize the media intended to use in it. No floppy, cd, now camera is recognized as inserted. But they are and cd's are spinning. Software cd (that should auto run) are trying to, but nothing is happening other than spinning.

during chkdsk/f the message comes up, 'cannot lock current drive b/c vol is in use by another process'
chkdsk/v message "warning!" F parameter not specified. Running chkdsk in read-only mode.
correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) Bitmap attribute.
Chkdsk discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap
Windows found problems with the file system.
run chkdsk/f option to correct these.

but if i run it, get the above 'cannot lock current drive b/c vol is in use by another process.

cannot get to sysinfo.org...either site not found, or timed out trying ??

dp

edit: thouroughly cleaned 2 weeks ago when this started happening. went through and checked all cables, connections, etc.
rebooted and everything worked...for a few days, started again. then i would just use hardware uninstall to correct, would work again short time. that process no longer working ...

[RazzleCat]

16. To get around that tricky problem

Re boot into safe mode, then run the chkdsk. Or boot straight to DOS and run it. Of course remove all media from all drives first. What that last message looks like is that a program is on boot loading onto your dive so windows cant dismount the drive to "fix" it.

[dweller]

17. i ran it from safe mode last nite

same messages ... (i think, i've run it so many times so far)...but always same messages.

still waiting on the scan above to finish.

dp

edit: is www.sysinfo.org working for anyone else?
still can't connect to it.

[Onlooker]

18. sysinfo appears to be down

You can also type the processes directly into google and you'll find useful info, but sysinfo.org is definitely the best. Hopefully, it's only down temporarily.

[banjosareunderrated]

20. Have you recently added any new hardware?

I'm wondering if your psu is getting pissed off about being stretched thin.

Maybe a chipset driver problem? Did you update those recently?

[dweller]

21. no, now new hardware

the camera is a temp usb storage connection, worked fine 2 weeks ago.

psu?

i have 2 hardrives, 60g & 30g, 60 is primary ide. It's 80%+ free. The 30g is about the same free.
both are on the primary ide cable connection on board.

2 cds, one burner set as master, a player set as slave on secondary ide cable connection on board.

floppy alone on fdd connection on board.

as others have advised running in safe mode, chkdsk, have done that and have gotten various error messages.
have run all antiviral, adaware and spybot, along with hijack this just in case. nothing showing up.

all i can think is that something is loading on bootup, which explains the winlogon.exe running for several minutes after i've logged in, that's setting something to not recognize the peripheral drives.

for example, putting in a software cd usually prompts an autorun, and the cd drive will show the logo for the program. now i put in a cd, it's starts spinning, and the cd icon stays the same, when attempting to open it, 'please insert disk' message comes up.
same for floppy, both cds, and now camera.

:shrug:

dp

[banjosareunderrated]

22. psu=power supply unit

Methinks it very unlikely, but if you had added a baddass new graphic card or something, you might have been drawing more power than your psu could handle. That will cause general stability problems. Unlikely considering winlogon problem.

Probably a dumb question, but do you have air conditioning? Heat will cause all sorts of weird stuff and, here in michigan, at least, it's been really hot. I have all kinds of crazy fans in mine and even with AC I had to bring it to the basement just to feel safe. If your cpu (processor) is heating up, it will act goofy. Do you know what temp. your processor is @? If not, you can use speedfan. http://www.almico.com/speedfan.php It's a free temp. monitor.

I know it sounds more like a malware problem, but since you seem to have all that covered, perhaps it's something more simple.

[dweller]

23. do have a/c

and had the box open yesterday, checked both fans, are working. Don't know the temp.

will check the link

thanks
dp

edit: even tho virus scans and bot checks have revealed nothing, i still have a feeling there is something they are missing.

[banjosareunderrated]

26. have you tried logging on as admin or another user name?

if so, does it still take a lot longer?

[dweller]

27. i'll check into that

not sure i can, since i only set up the one password, login.

dp

[northzax]

24. have you reset the hyperdrive?

reconfigured the thermal detonator? restored the backup power system capacitators?

no? that's what you should do first. Let us know when you've completed these elementary steps.

[dweller]

25. she's breakin' up Captain

i'm working as hard as i can.

dp

[jmowreader]

28. Have you installed any new software recently?

Dunno if Win2000 uses DLLs, but this sounds very much like a DLL problem.

DLL = Dynamic Link Library. Little programs the computer uses to do all manner of useful things. The rotten things can conflict with each other, new software can put older DLLs on your machine because That's What The Programmer Had Sitting There and the old DLLs can screw up programs that need newer ones...

And they all have such wonderfully intuitive names! Instead of IFukYerPuterGood.dll, which does exactly what its name says, you'll get GXFC432218229FTA.dll, which is so named because the programmer was kicked out of the Army for misconduct. (Hey, no one told him he couldn't smoke a joint while he was fixing the general's helicopter!)

I think Microsoft has a site where you can check the revision levels of all their DLLs.

[dweller]

29. umm....i don't _think_ so...

now i'll have to check. I do dl some programs occasionally from the net, but from Tucows or legit sites.

but just curious what you'd think if all of a sudden your floppy, cd drives and digital camera all 3 (4 in my case) started giving the exact same message when you attempted to use them ... 'please insert disk' while the disk was in there and spinning, etc.

it's really frustrating. I can't help thinking it's in the registry, and don't know where or what to look for there without risk. The winlogon.exe running for several minutes on bootup tells me something is fishy about this.

dp

[jmowreader]

30. This won't help dweller, but a question for you Win2000 experts

The Registry is a file, right?

Is it possible to get your computer stable, then write this file to a CD or stash a copy of it in a directory, so you'll be able to put a known-good Registry on your machine as a last-ditch repair measure?

Or better, write the whole directory that contains Windows to a CD so you can overwrite your screwed-up one if need be?

I used to run DOS in a place where all of our computers had SyQuest drives (they're like Zip drives but different, if that makes any sense) on them and all our software was site licensed. We created one standardized C: drive and copied it to a SyQuest cartridge. If the world came to an end on that machine, we'd get the box running with a basic DOS directory and the SyQuest driver, then just reinstall the whole C: drive. All our data files were on D: and backed up over SNA to an IBM 4361 in the basement, so you couldn't lose anything if you tried. It's too bad you can't do that now; it made life really easy.

[banjosareunderrated]

31. start--run---type "regedit"---click file---click export--save

[dweller]

32. more info on

sam database, please.

read your reply in the comp support group, i can't reply there.

thanks.
dp

[banjosareunderrated]

33. I know very little about this stuff...

so I didn't want to needlessly worry you, that's why I posted it to the experts. The SAM (Security Account Management) database has been a target for hackers in the past but mainly for servers, not home pc's. I honestly don't know if it has ever been attacked by malware, only actual humans. It's where all your windows' usernames and passwords (logons) are stored.


http://d0db.fnal.gov/sam_faq/cgi/faq

Do you have a Windows2000 disc? If so, can you get your cdrom running enough to run installation repair?

[dweller]

34. still have the install disk

and will have to get to a burner to create a boot disk i guess.

the cd players work, spin, etc., will not autorun install. software...and i just can't access them. :(

i'm 'locked' out of them it feels like.

dp

[banjosareunderrated]

35. even upgrade discs have a "repair installation" choice on them so

you won't have to create a new boot disc. If you cannot access any cdrom though, i don't know. One other thing to try, all windows install and upgrade discs do a quick setup and then give you the option of quitting the install so that your drive(s) aren't affected at all. Maybe try setting your cdrom as first boot choice in your bios and then inserting your windows disc and rebooting. If it's a hardware problem, your cd drive won't be able to read the disc and you'll get an error. Now you know that it's not a Windows problem, it's a hardware problem because no OS is loaded at that point. If the disc is read and Windows starts to install, you can cancel setup and return knowing that your hardware is working and it has to be something in your files or a problem with your hard disc. Either way, you can get back without making any changes. Knowing if it's hardware of software problem should help you narrow it down.

this situation sucks. i'm sorry you're dealing with it.

[dweller]

36. actually, that's some of the best info i've seen

but i will have to look at the disk to see what is on it first...that i can do on a laptop available.
i'm 99% sure it's NOT hardware. Which is why i wanted to use a boot disk, to rewrite the bootlog/file, and hopefully get rid of the problem that's loaded then (i'm assuming it's loading then).
CD is first boot, so it will read it (i hope) ...

i'll try this first thing tomorrow.

MANY THANKS
dp

[redacted]

37. My advice, get a Mac this won't happen. NT

[banjosareunderrated]

38. yep...you'll just be saddled with a $1000+ machine that can't be upgraded

significantly. Lamborghinis are great for the people that can afford them at their base price, but for those with 500 bucks and some ingenuity, pc's will always be superior. You spend your bucks for that ferrari. I'll take a '79 chevy that can be tweaked to perfection and spend my excess bucks on something worthwhile, like a new processor that drops seamlessly into the mobo that I bought two years ago. I know for Mac people that might as well be a different language, but what I'm talking about is "getting your fucking hands dirty." Then, I'll run freeBSD which is more secure than your precious OSX and my "lowly" PC will outperform your $2000 Mac by lightyears.

I love MacElitists. They think they got a better deal because the best buy dude told them "apple's don't get problems", but have no clue how computers are actually built or how OS's are secured but they think that since john Q is having malware problems, their "special machine" is immunized from problems. Y'all are right, of course, PC's MUST run windoze, we don't have any OS choices other than Mr. Gates' while you Mac folks get, um, one. You people are funny.

I hope you enjoy that 1000 dollar brick. I'm sure you'll fork out another grand in two years and continue to be clueless about why the average computer gets fucked.

[jmowreader]

39. Yawn...

Let's see...

There are processor upgrades for the Mac.

You can upgrade your memory, hard drive, CD/DVD drives, etc., etc., etc., in many cases using The Exact Same Parts you'd put in a PC. This Mac I'm sitting in front of has RAM I bought at a "make your own computer" place and a hard drive from Circuit City in it. (Quick note: if you swap your hard drive, it's best to use the System Restore CD that came with it; when I installed this hard drive, I tried using my Mac OS 9 install CD to boot the machine; it couldn't see the hard drive. I booted off the System Restore CD and the new drive popped right up.)

There are several Linux builds for the Mac.

And ya know something? Quite a few of us are very knowledgeable about why the average computer gets fucked. Registry problems, DLL Hell, malware. Do you know there are more viruses for Windows than there are programs for the Mac? And do you know why? It's not because of marketshare; it's because you can overwrite the startup drive on a PC and can't on a Mac, which makes writing the really nasty-ass "Hi, sucker, kiss your hard drive goodbye!" viruses y'all have in Windows kinda difficult.

Let's see...we have no Registry on the Mac and what passes for DLLs (extensions) on a Mac have actual names so you can turn them off if you need to. And on Mac OS 9, you could boot into a "safe mode" with all extensions turned off by pressing a key on the keyboard. But our "safe mode" was a bit different: unlike on the PC, where "safe mode" won't actually do anything, you can produce work on the computer if you need to.

Mac is for people who know why an average computer gets fucked and don't want to put up with it.

[aeolian]

41. "Overwrite the startup drive?"

Uhhh...I'll give you a chance to clarify that before I start laughing...

[jmowreader]

42. Got a spare PC? Try this...

go to a command/DOS prompt and type "format c:"

Watch what happens.

My favorite system-drive-protection scheme is on the Navy's Unisys AN/UYK-43 mainframe. Mine had two hard drives: one for applications, the other for data. The only reason to write to the applications was if you wanted to change something about them. So what you had to do:

1) Take the users off line and restart the UYK with the users turned off.
2) Fire up the tape drive.
3) Put a plug into the back of the system drive to override the write protection.
4) Mount the load tape you wrote on a different computer onto the tape drive.
5) Using the Data General boot computer and the Model 43 teletype, command the UYK to read the load tape into memory.
6) Now use the Mod 43 to replace the pertinent blocks on the system drive with the data you loaded from the load tape.
7) If it worked--it didn't every time--shut the UYK down, pull the write-enable plug out of the back of the hard drive, and restart the UYK.
8) If the fix took, bring the users back up.

[aeolian]

47. Actually, on any modern operating system (including XP)

you'll be politely informed that the drive cannot be dismounted, and therefore cannot be formated. You've got to know what you're doing to format the c: drive.

That's my point, you're a fan of the operating system, not of the computer itself. And once apple completes its migration to x86, Mac will, IMHO, be nothing more than an overpriced PC box running a bloated version of Linux. :)

But that's just my opinion. To each his own. :toast:

[banjosareunderrated]

43. Not Mac users, MacElitists...

the ones that offer help to people in shitty pc situations by saying, "get a mac." That's not help, that's pissing on someone who's already having a hard time. Or seeing someone struggling to fix a buick on the side of the road and yelling out "get an Audi."

BTW, can you point me to a place where I can buy a Mac processor?

[aeolian]

48. I know where one can buy a mac processor (warning: evil)

:evilgrin:

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/processors/index.htm

:evilgrin:

[banjosareunderrated]

44. (yawn)

could you please direct me to a place that sells Mac processors, my little sister is due for a present. I'm not being coy, I'd really like to know where to buy them.

[redacted]

46. No way will I give you advice after you were so rude. Coy or serious.

No one ever said macs were fault-free, but frankly if you are dealing with a digital camera and images -- a mac is a better machine for your average end user.

And I am not some chump who bought a mac because someone told me that they never have trouble -- I am a very sophisticated user.

And BTW you CAN buy a mac for $500 bucks, a much better machine than a $500 PC. So where's your argument now?

[Name removed]

51. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[aeolian]

40. BAAAHAHAHAHAHA!

Yeah, 'cause macs never fuck up!

:rofl:

[dweller]

45. update

well, before i made any more changes to my system, i booted this morning and watched it hang, went to taskmanager, and noticed the 5 processes for AVG(antivirus), tried shutting them off. 2 would, 3 would not. So i uninstalled the sucker, and popped in the software cd for my camera. Sure enough, it worked. Both cd players worked, same for floppy drive. On the next bootup, no hang in the logon.exe.

I had noticed AVG interfered with Firefox (which i use for email) but i could shut off one of those processes, and Firefox worked fine after that (as long as i shut off AVG everytime).

So that was doing something to block access to my cd, floppy, etc. It wasn't interfering at first with the drives, b/c they were working in the past after installing AVG, but now...whatever had changed, it was screwing it up.

I started to re-install AVG to see if i could tweak it to not load at startup, and block whatever processes were interfering, but it didn't seem to want to allow me to set preferences. So i quit the install.

will have to check out their page to see if there are any FAQs and fixes, etc.

but for now, it's remedied...i think.


thanks again for all of the advice, and for the latest laugh as the MAC daddies and PC users hash it out... :D

dp

[aeolian]

50. Good! Glad to hear it.

And glad to have another opprotunity get into the ring with some Mac fans. :)

(All in good fun, of course :toast: )