Whenever I start my computer, windows explorer stops responding. all the other programs start up fine. its just WE. i tried shutting the process down and restarting it using task manager, but to no avail. it works for two seconds (i can highlight taskbar items), but then feezes. i can open folders and run programs from the desktop, except for my computer, which sits there looking for the items.
This problem needs some background info:
I had resolved a problem with internet connection sharing between my wireless enabled laptop and my old ibm desktop that has no modem.
this ibm had been sitting there isolated from the internet for about 3 or 4 years. it had an ancient AVG free 7.5 in it, but it was never updated. so, i thought i should get the latest avg and do some maintenance. i downloaded avg free 8 and proceeded to the setup, which went on fine until it failed the installation and displayed this error:
Action failed for file avgssie.dll: File registration... Error 0x80070002
i tried installing it again a few times but it still didnt work. googling the problem told me that this is something silly with avg 8. so i decided to go get another antivirus software. i decided on avast! free edition. i d/loaded it and it installed fine with no hiccups. it asked me if i want it to do a boot scan in the next bootup and i clicked ok. i restarted the computer to finish the installation, and it started scanning.
during the scan, which took about 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours, it found 5 infected files, with a couple trojans (and worms? not sure... there was some variety of baddies). needless to say, i was horrified. along the way, it found a virus, and as usual, asked me what to do with it. i pressed "1 for delete", but it turns out, this little idiot was in a Windows file, and avast asked me if i was sure. i pressed "no". now i didnt know what to do, so i tried pressiing "page up" to try and scroll up the scan progress display, but when i pressed it, it went on scanning the rest of the computer. i think it ignored the problem.
after the scan finished, normal startup followed... until, as pointed out in top, windows explorer locked up. after some more googling, i found out that this problem is usually attributed to spyware and stuff like that... which makes sense. so i tried to shut the computer down using task manager. it said windows explorer is not responding, blah blah, 'end now'. when i click end now, everything disappears except the wallpaper and it goes into super freeze. it doesnt respond to *anything* and the only way to shut it down is through a 5 second power button push. (*shudder*)
i turned it on again, and this time, while WE was stuck, i opened up the newly installed avast (because this was supposed to be caused by spyware). it started doing some memory scan, which was fine until it came up to a file called 'dllhost', after which it just sits there, doing nothing. attempts to shut down the process only yielded 'access denied' messages. but after a while, the program closed on its own.
after a while, i started it up again, and this time i stopped the memory scan before it could get to dllhost.
i went into the options and set some preferences, getting ready to scan, and lo and behold: avast locks up again.
wonderful.
so this is my maddening problem(s).
HELP
ME.
system info:
Windows XP pro sp2
Pentium 4 2.0ghz
512mb RAM
Linear Mode
