Why do computer problems always happen at the worst possible time?

[Finch]

This is like a bad horror story. I hate computers, I really do.

-rambling-

I have a research paper due tomorrow and was working on my laptop. I re-opened the word document to continue it and the word document refused to open… then the computer said I did not have enough visual memory to open this document and that it was “increasing” the memory space. The box disappeared about a half hour later and still no program was working so I went to defragment my c drive to see if I could speed anything up because everything was as slow as molasses. It said that a program was trying to run on my C drive and activate that program. It would not let me defragment. Program… some random latter combination. I did not know what that was so I did a system search for that program, found it and clicked on it because I was wondering what it was and if I could find out more. It immediately installed… something.

!

That’s not good. I was worried and a few moments later my fears were confirmed when I got the message (something like) “vital windows operating systems were replaced with indentified data. To ensure system functionality, please insert the XP professionals disk now so that the missing data may be re-installed”

**** thats halfway across the state.

-end rant-

Does any of this sound familiar to anyone? I am at the library computer. I had an earlier version of my project on a flash drive so it was not the end of the world, but my computer is not working. Any ideas as to what may have happened? The laptop help place is closed on sunday X/

 

[shanec]

not seen that specifically, but try and find a copy of "Spy Bot Search and Destroy", give that a run.

It usually removes any spyware/hijacker type software pretty well.

Make sure you've got an Antivirus up to date...NOD32 is my preference, but AVG (I think) and Avast both have free versions. I'm not a fan, but they work really well for free software.

 

[Not a Number]

Sounds like you got some sort of malware trojan nasty on there.

Prompts like that normally don't come from Microsoft software. Some times it is best just to shut off the machine by pulling the power cord or a hardware reset so the program can't drop it's payload.

Get HijackThis from Trendmicro. If you can reboot your machine run it with the log option and upload the log to one of the many popular support forums you can find with a quick search. Stick with one forum to avoid confusion. These guys are pros at getting your system cleaned up.

Good luck!