I have an Emachines P3 500Mhz w/256Mb RAM & 80GbHDD that runs ME GREAT! Contrary to some of what I read here, ME is 98 but great! Boots in seconds!
Burns CD's, DVD's on a LiteON no problem (upgraded Power Supply to 200W).
I just dropped it down to 128Mb RAM last night due to a failure uncovered by Chris Brady's "MemTest-86 v3.1a". The remaining 128 RAM chip tested OK running Memtest-86 overnite (7.5 hrs).

I have generally worked behind the protection of Norton AV with files updated ~ 1/(month or two) with full system scans 4x a year. I have regularly defragged at about the same rate. In order to control the swap file fragmentation, & speed up the machine after it got its new HDD in 03, I locked the Swap file at 512Mb.

I have not been able to complete a defrag for ~1 year due to background writes that would force a restart. Probably not important but possibly a diagnostic indicator of where this all started. I have done a LOT to find the background process, including turning off C:write behind caching & DMA, reducing Msconfig startups to the minimum set recommended by annoyances.org, and even eliminating the taskbar files (a longshot I read about at annoyances).

System Restore (Post 9/2001 patch done already) was coming in handy a lot, starting 5 months ago- but ceased to work in Feb this year. Couldn't create or even use a Setpoint anymore.

The memory test was precipitated by increasingly persistent boot hangs (w/ wallpaper but no taskbar/icons), that weren't fixed by the following efforts- all of which were NEW ADVENTURES for me (i.e. Desperation to get Taxes done):
Replace Fans and Remove/Rinse Processor heatsink while fan off
DOS Boot & C: Deltree \_restore
Ccleaner- All OK
FUll NAV 2005 Scan Booting from CD- All OK
Spybot S&D - Found 24 items of spyware & crushed 'em
Hijackthis found a few funny things- discussed below.
I haven't killed them yet because the analyzer @ hijackthis.de got me a little confused.

The Boot hangs are right after my wallpaper comes up and Windows plays its little dittie (music). No taskbar, no icons. About 1/20 or 1/30 boots, I'll get the icons and taskbar. Problem seems to affect both safe mode and normal boots- but safe mode is a hair better. This sounds like IE hanging, from what I've read, but IE is not really repairable in ME systems- no listing under Add/Remove programs and no repair option under System Information. Is there anyone out there who knows how to repair 5.5 (I loaded SP2) in an ME system?
I was thinking of copying files from another ME system I have using DOS commands, but which ones?

Hijackthis.de reviewed my file: All OK except:
O2 - BHO: ATLDistrib Object - {93C6313C-9DB4-4694-8BD0-E378C573A9AD} - C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\FCCYA.DLL
Kill it?

O4 - HKLM\..\RunOnce: [*FCCYA] rundll32.exe C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\FCCYA.DLL,CreateProtectProc rerun
Kill it?

O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\VxD\MSTCP: Domain = aoldsl.net
Kill it? I have AOL but not DSL.... if that helps.


Thanks, from what I've read on your forums, y'all are great!

Hi there Clueless in peattle.

Looks like you have (atleast) a Vundo infection on there. But can you first please post a full hijackthis log for me to look at?

Yes, with the exception of AOL working poorly, win ME had full functionality iff boot OK. I even loaded Tax calculation software on Monday & ran it! 20 boots last nite yielded 0 successes, however- I think it is getting worse. What surprises me is that I pulled the bad memory chip and it still won't work.

I just sent excerpts of my HJT log in the original post on this thread that didn't fly Green thru the "HijackThis.De" analyzer.

My intuition is to kill the "FCCYA" lines using HJT, but my intuition has been known to cause the odd explosion.

Here's the requested log as an attachment:

And Thank You for your consideration in this little microdisaster of mine!

Attached Files

hijackthis.log (2.7 KB, 2 views)

The 017 is legit from AOL , so nothing to worry about.

And you only have a Vundo infection , other then that its clean.

But it seems to be a new variant , this is the first time ive seen it combined with a 04 "CreateProtectProc rerun" entry. So there is a change the "old" fix doesn't work but lets give it a go first:




Please download VundoFix.exe from here , and save it to your desktop.

• Double-click VundoFix.exe to run it.
• Put a check next to Run VundoFix as a task.
• You will receive a message saying vundofix will close and re-open in a minute or less. Click OK
• When VundoFix re-opens, click the Scan for Vundo button.
• Once it's done scanning, click the Remove Vundo button.
• You will receive a prompt asking if you want to remove the files, click YES
• Once you click yes, your desktop will go blank as it starts removing Vundo.
• When completed, it will prompt that it will shutdown your computer, click OK.
• Turn your computer back on.

Please post the contents of C:\vundofix.txt and a new HiJackThis log.


Also i would recommend to update windows , and it seems you have no AV and no firewall. Have a look for some free ones in our download section if you want.

Finally got a safe mode boot, and opened explorer (file manager, not IE) to bring in vundofix.exe from floppy. This crashed safe mode to wallpaper so I used a boot floppy and copied it to c:\windows\desktop
From there I followed your instructions to the letter, but vundofix never came back after I checked the task box and hit OK button. I retried 3x and waited > 5 minutes. I will try to delete those two entries with HJT now & send HJT log.