Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsme.general (
More info?)
"George" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
news:0f9201c518d3$11793790$a401280a@phx.gbl:
> Alright....the computer is booting up in Safe Mode. But
> restarting it in normal mode after that (as per Richard's
> suggestion) did not work. Follwoing Theta, I looked into
> the 'Msconfig'->Startup Tab-> and nothing really looked
> suspicious ! But I will put the list of the processes
> here today/tomorrow. By the way, in the safe mode, I ran
> Spybot and Ad-Aware and the found and removed 'DSO
> Exploit' and "Isearch Reg Key' respectively. I
> uninstalled the Spybot under the safe mode and tried to
> reboot normally.....but it's still not working. This
> feels so frustrating !!
>
I know how frustrating it can be. My PC was completely inoperative for over
two months simply because one minor setting was unexplainably changed in my
system BIOS. It took patience and a lot of troubleshooting to find the
problem but everything is fine now. Just as with mine, your descriptions of
the problem suggest that it is nothing major and you will just need to be
patient and run through a few checks to determine the cause of the problem.
The first thing you might try involves process of elimination. Go into Safe
Mode-> Start-> Run-> MSCONFIG-> Startup Tab and then uncheck EVERYTHING
except items that obviously relate to your video display, mouse, and/or
keyboard (if applicable). Keep in mind that any firewall and/or anti-virus
programs will now be completely disabled unless started manually, so I would
not surf the web unguarded! With all unchecked (except as noted), reboot
normally and if your PC now successfully loads Windows, you can try Start->
Run-> MSCONFIG-> Startup tab and checking items one at a time and rebooting
after each one until Windows begins to hang again at startup. This may give
you a clue as to what may be causing the problem.
Also, in Safe Mode you may try Start-> Control Panel-> System-> Device
Manager and check for any hardware conflicts (as noted by a yellow
exclamation mark). These can pop up sometimes when you least expect it and
can be caused by a number of things (such as a corrupt/missing driver or
corrupt/missing system file).
If the above doesn't work, you should post the entire startup list here and
one other thing...the boot log. Between these two, they should pinpoint where
your problem lies.
To have your PC create a boot log, restart and F8 but instead of Safe Mode,
choose the Logged Boot selection. After selecting it, your PC will try to
boot normally but due to your problem, it will probably not make into
Windows. Before rebooting and while Windows is still attempting to load, you
may try waiting about two minutes & then CTRL+ALT+DELETE. Take note of
everything that is running in the list and take special note of anything that
may say (Not Responding).
From here, go ahead and reboot back into Safe Mode. The Boot Log should have
been created and saved in My Computer-> C:\ If it is not there, use Start-
>Search and search for BOOTLOG.TXT
Post it and the startup list from MSCONFIG here. Between the two, that should
give an indication as to what is causing the problem. In the meantime, I
would also suggest running a full virus scan to be on the safe side.
Try the above first. If the above checks do not work or the information you
post here doesn't indicate the problem, we can go from there. The next steps
after the above would involve running scanreg from Start->Run, running a full
scandisk, possibly restoring the registry from an earlier point via Safe Mode
or command prompt, and/or using system restore to restore to an earlier point
when the PC was booting correctly. However, I believe that the info I asked
you to post should indicate the problem.
Just a side note, a DSO Exploit is virtually harmless if you have updated
Internet Explorer in the past 9 months or so from Microsoft but I would
remove it anyways. If you surf the web often, you can pretty much expect it
to pop up just about every time you run SpyBot. As for the ISearch regkeys,
it is a good thing that they were removed, but I can't see ISearch having a
bearing on why your PC won't boot normally unless there is still an ISearch
toolbar file that is trying to load and causing problems at startup. The
startup list will indicate if this is the case.
~Theta Sigma
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