Alright I am experiencing some weird changes with my PC today. First off out of the blue my boot sector gets damaged and I had to go and create another one so i could boot my OS. After I did all of this for some reason my sound stopped working. Device Manager says all my codecs/drivers are working properly but when I click my speaker icon in the system tray It says I have no audio device installed. Now thats just the minor problem. They major one is I cant get into My Computer. I click the icon and the whole system freezes up. Therefore I can not access my C drive at all. I have a copy of Spyware Doctor that I have ran but it gets to 95% then my PC restarts. I absolutely have no idea what's going on. I need all the suggestions and help I can get because I have alot of important info on my PC and I do not want it to get formatted.

For the sound error I get the following:

Bad DirectSound driver: Please install proper drivers or select another device in configuration.
Error Code: 88780078

The funny thing is the PC says all the drivers are working fine...

Also...

I ran HijackThis and here is my log file...



Thanks in advance.

- Mike

I am running XP Pro. I am most concerned about not being able to open My Computer at all. Please help!

**ADMIN EDIT - PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES - DO NOT POST YOUR LOG INTO YOUR POST - ATTACH IT AS A FILE IN FUTURE - THANKS**

Attached Files

log.txt (5.1 KB, 2 views)

Hya MM , welcome to PCHF.

Youre hjt log doesn't look to bad , but let's clean it first and see if it helps with youre problem.



Before fixing things with HijackThis Please Do the Following:

Show hidden files and folders:

For XP:

1. On the Tools menu in Windows Explorer, click Folder Options.
2. Click the View tab.
3. Under Hidden files and folders, click Show hidden files and folders.
4. If you see a warning message, click Yes.
5. Click Apply.
6. Click OK.

Disable System Restore to prevent re-infection.
(If you have/use it. You can turn it back on when youre PC is clean).

How to disable system restore:

WinXP.

1. Click the Start button.
2. Right-click My Computer, and then click Properties.
3. On the System Restore tab, check Turn off System Restore or Turn off System Restore on all drives.

Please download CCleaner

Download Ewido Security Suite

• Install Ewido Security Suite.
• When installing, under Additional Options uncheck Install background guard and Install scan via context menu
• Launch Ewido, there should be a big "E" icon on your desktop, double-click it.
• The program will prompt you to update click the "OK" button
• The program will now go to the main screen
• You will need to update Ewido to the latest definition files.
• On the left hand side of the main screen click update
• Click on Start
• The update will start and a progress bar will show the updates being installed.*
• After the updates are installed, exit ewido , don't run a scan yet.

Then boot in safemode (hit f8 when booting up) and uninstall "WildTangent" in "add and remove programs".

Then fix these with hjt:

And delete the files in bold , after that run Ccleaner.

Then still in safemode run Ewido:

Close all open windows/programs/folders and then run Ewido.* Have nothing else open while ewido performs its scan!

• Click on Scanner , Settings
• Under "How to scan" all boxes should be selected
• Under "Possibly unwanted software" all boxes should be selected
• Under "What to scan" select scan every file
• Click OK, Complete system scan
• Let the program scan the machine
• If ewido finds anything, it will pop up a notification.*

NOTE:* We have been finding some cases of false positives with the new version of Ewido, so you need to step through the fixes one-by-one.* If Ewido finds something that you KNOW is legitimate (for example, parts of AVG Antivirus, AOL, pcAnywhere and the game "Risk" have been flagged.* In particular, watch for alerts that have the word "Heuristic" in them - if you recognize the file name as "friendly," these may actually be false positives) select "none" as the action.*

DO NOT check "Perform action with all infections."* If you are unsure of an entry, select "none" for the time being.* We will see that in the log when you post it later and let you know if ewido needs to be run again.

Once the scan has completed, there will be a button located on the bottom of the screen named Save report.

Click Save report. Save the report to your desktop, exit ewido


NOTE:

If during your scan Ewido "crashes" or "hangs", please try scanning again. Before running the scan, click on 'Scanner' (the 3rd bar from the top on the left) and Choose 'Settings'. Uncheck 'Scan in NTFS Alternate Data Streams' as this can cause problems in overly infected systems. Click 'OK' and run a new scan.


Then please post a new HijackThis log and the Ewido log by attaching them to a post.

Hello and welcome to PCHF metalmikey.

Could you try and boot into safemode and see whether you can open your `My Documents` from there.

Your problem could be one of three things:

• Faulty hard drive
• Corrupt Operating System
• Faulty memory

Would you be able to download Burnintest from the following link:
http://www.passmark.com/download/index.htm

Then run the program in safemode and run scans on your hard drive as well as your memory.
Let us know whether it finds any problems.

Running a Defrag and Scandisk from windows will also help resolve issues with hard drive/software. So run those two programs from safemode.

Safemode works perfectly fine. Im about to try Joe's idea first. Thanks buys for your time.

Here is my Ewido report.




::Report End

Last warning - ATTACH logs DO NOT post them into the thread or they will be ignored.

Attached Files

log.txt (9.5 KB, 2 views)

Still no go. When I click on my computer it just has the flashlight searching then everything on the screen disappears for a few secs then comes back with nothing opened.