Freezing Vista

[Mikehotel152]

Yes, I know: Vista is pants. But the 64bit version was pre-installed on my super-dupa state-of-the-art desktop and despite warnings from the purveyors of doom and gloom, it worked very well until this morning. That's 6 months of speedy convenience and the occasional pleasant surprise as Vista casually informed me that it was doing this or that on my behalf.

Then this morning my ESET Antivirus software caught a 'virus' while I was online (I ought to point out that I was on two websites belonging to a reputable Aviation Training Establishment and not megaboobies.com!). I took the option to delete the infected files and thought no more of it.

...until the pc froze, or more precisely the cursor turned into the little blue swirling circle which denotes that windows is 'thinking'. This state of affairs continues until the pc is re-booted. You then have a window of about a minute before the computer freezes again, usually while you're frantically checking settings or running the 'restore' function.

Incidentally, I have restored to a previous point three times and run the virus check software in the windows safe mode. Nothing has worked. I can't even use the Vista rescue CD-ROM because that crashes after, you guessed it, a minute.

Can anyone please make any useful suggestions please...aside from advising that I buy a Mac or switch to XP!!! :(

Thanks....

[cats_five]

Sounds to me like your PC might still be in warrantee. If it is, contact the builders.

[Stick Flying]

Sounds like you have installed Service Pack 1 for vista. Many reports of notebooks crashing after this update. I would suggest you start it in safe mode and find whether you have restored the system back to pre SP1. If you are still running post SP1 kiss it off immediately and your problems will be solved.

[Tarq57]

Generally speaking, you should not delete virii on first contact. They should be quarantined. That way, if it turns out to be a false positive detection (and almost all the AV's do this at times, even NOD) and a system file was removed, there is a chance to restore it from whence it came.

I believe it's possible this happened in your case.
If it is in the quarantine, try re-scanning it. I understand Esset are pretty good at updating definitions, esp when a false detection is involved. If it scans clean, restore it.

It may well be SP1 playing up; the sequence/timing of events would suggest otherwise.

[Captahab]

I have had it too with NOD32

Dear Reseller,

A false positive detection of various Adobe and gaming files has occurred, this can cause system hangs. The signature updates 3119 and 3120 contained a bug. Typically it manifests itself by detecting innocent files as potentially infected. Updating to version 3121 should fix the issue.

3119 was released at 10:45; 3121 at 13:40 today (European time).

The problem affects v3 users only.

The issue was in the engine code, it was dormant for long time and after recent cleanup of the code for v3 it started to manifest itself. It is not a problem of a wrong signature. For the problem to become visible, several events must happen in right order. This is why it was not recognized during our release testing. While this is being addressed please use the following work-around:

Open up the EAV or ESS Control Center by completing the following (do not click on anything else or your system will hang before you can complete this):

For Windows XP

1. Click on ?Start?.

2. Click on ?All Programs?.

3. Click on ?ESET?.

4. Click on ?ESET NOD32 Antivirus? or ?ESET Smart Security?.
5. Click on ?ESET NOD32 Antivirus? or ?ESET Smart Security?, this will open up the EAV or ESS Control Center.

6. Click on ?Setup?.

7. Click on ?Enter entire advanced setup tree? or ?Toggle advanced mode? and then ?Enter entire advanced setup tree?.

8. Click on ?Tools? and make sure this is expanded so you can see the items beneath it.

9. Click on ?ThreatSense.Net?.

10. In the right hand side, remove the tick from ?Enable ThreatSense.Net Early Warning System?.

11. Click on ?OK?.

12. Close the Control Center.

13. Reboot your computer.




If you cannot boot into normal Windows then complete the following:

1. Restart in Safe mode by tapping F8 on your keyboard as the computer is first started.

2. Delete the file C:\Program Files\ESET\ESET Smart Security\em002_32.dat

3. Delete the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ESET\ESET Smart Security\Updfiles or If you have Windows Vista delete the folder C:\Users\All Users\ESET\ESET Smart Security\Updfiles

4. Delete all files in the folder C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\ESET\ESET Smart Security\Charon\ or If you have Windows Vista delete all files in the folder C:\Users\All Users\ESET\ESET Smart Security\Charon

5. Restart the computer.

6. Reboot into normal Windows and update ESET Smart Security/ESET NOD32 Antivirus with the button in Update called ?Update virus signature database?.

7. Restart the computer.

ESET will address this shortly and ThreatSense.Net can be turned back on.




Please ensure that EVERY client who is using version 3.0 is now using the latest version 3.0.657.

1. Download the very latest version of EAV 3.0.657 or ESS 3.0.657 and SAVE the installer to the DESKTOP.

2. Uninstall your current version.

3. Restart the computer.

4. Install the latest version.

5. Restart the computer.

[Mikehotel152]

Thanks for the tips. I shall look into the one courtesy of Captahab.

[Mikehotel152]

The plot thickened shortly after my first post, with Windows not starting in normal mode at all on the spurious excuse that my version of Windows is not genuine. :confused:

In the meantime, I went into Windows safe mode and deleted the files as per Captahab's post.

The computer's bizarre new attitude to the legitimacy of my copy on Vista led to the solution. I started by trying to 'activate' Windows by typing in the product key as requested on the blue screen. Cue Error Code 0X800700D. Hmmm. Unhelpful. I then opted for the online authorisation option. Cue next problem: Windows could not access the internet and did not know why because the Diagnostics Policy Service is not running. Hmmm. Fortunately the pc gave me the option of opening the wildly user friendly (:suspect:) 'Service Control Manager' which allows you to turn on 'services' you never knew existed. I manually turned on the ones that allow system diagnotics and Windows updates. Suddenly Windows woke up, and on re-boot things started working.

I allowed ESET to update the virus software and allowed Vista to update itself. An hour later and Service Pack 1 is installed and all is working again. I'll probably never know what caused the problem, but I am mightily relieved. :p