Web browser closes shortly after I start it.

The other day i downloaded something from a site which is safe according to SiteAdviser. I scanned the download and it came back clean (AVG). But shortly after running the download (an installer for a plugin for iTunes) I noticed that my web browsers are messed up. Both Firefox and Opera will just close down abour 20 seconds after I open them, totally regadless of what website I'm at. Internet explorer seems okay at first, but occasionally it will freeze up. Could take 5 minutes, could take half an hour.

So if anyone has any idea, I would greatly appreciate any input. Thank You.

1) uninstall both the browsers (remove everything, dont leave any of their folders)
2) run registry cleaner (try registry mechanic or tuneup utilities) both of them are good
3) run disk clean
4) install browsers again
5) check if everything is ok
6) post again


check in the task manager>processes- see if there is any strange exe file running against your user name and stop it

does event viewer give you any information, can you use explorer "not IE" to view web pages? hit control alt delete and see what processes you have running in the back ground. then run msconfig and remove any thing that looks as if it shouldnt be there. Also dl ad-aware and spybot, update them and run them. Online virus scans can also help this situation, so try explorer and see if this will get you out to the net.

Thanks both of you for your prompt replies! I will do as baggi says. I did uninstall and reinstall but did not clean the reg entries.

ghost, I have not checked explorer, only IE, will do that. I ahve been watching for unexpected processes running, and I have laready checked the startup programs in msconfig. Thanks again both of you, I'll be back with the news :)

Have you tried uninstalling the program that you downloaded prior to all this happening..?

it seems that the program is conflicting with other programs, and therefore should be the problem..

Itunes comes with a whole bunch of adware stuff
Be carefull what you install during the installation.
Try to uninstall the program. Then install it again and read carefully what you install xtra ( if you want something xtra). I usually don't install the xtra's.

Maybe the add's which you could have installed can't be displayed because of the addblockers
maybe that conflicts with it.
Not sure but it could.

good luck with it.

-phunction

All good advice.

Please run your scans in safe mode ;) you stand a better chance that way.

You don't say which operating system, but I will assume recent Windows, in which case try booting into safe mode with network support................... do you still have the problem?

Please don't try to connect to the Internet, until you have manually started your AV and firewall :eek:

yes nihil it's winXP SP1.
I have uninstalled iTunes and the plugin.
Sorry to keep you in suspense, but now I have another hurdle in my way before I can get to this problem. when I log in I see my wallpaper for maybvea second and then it logs me out. I may have to wipe the drive and re-install :(
I'm posting this form my linux OS, which I can also use to verify that, happily, all my data is still there. :)

many thanks to all who replied.

Greeting's


Just an advise : I seriously think you should upgrade to SP2.

Hi again. Unfortunately problems quickly escalated, and I was totally unable to log on to my PC. I will be reformatting/reinstalling, so I guess we'll never know how to fix this problem. But many thanks to all who offered their advice.

I did try the option on the winXP CD to repair a current installation, and it did not help. I was also unable to log on in safe mode.

Hmmmm,

1. Can you still boot from Linux?
2. Can you boot from a CD?
3. Can you boot from a floppy?
4. Can you get into BIOS setup?

What BIOS are you using, and what number of beeps (if any) do you get on bootup?

Quote:

---

Unfortunately problems quickly escalated, and I was totally unable to log on to my PC

---

If you really cannot get into your PC with anything, that sounds like a hardware problem.

na... its a software problem alright,

i suffered that once after loading some game (i dont remember which one)

anyway after i had installed it ran fine. but once i shut down the comp and restarted next day, this same thing happened. had to restart into msdos>>>>startup and deleated everything there. and restarted normally

now Gallo_Pinto do this

1) restart comp
2) press F8 repeatedly to get into boot choice or OS choice option.
3) you will see number of options, the one we are interested in is called "restart in msdos"
4) after its done scrolling through files it will say "c:\ documents and settings\username>
5) type dir
6) type cd start menu
7) type dir
8) type cd programs
9) type dir
10) type cd startup
11) type dir
12) delete everything
13) restart

that should do it ;)

Just outta curiosity - WTF did you download? A plugin for iTunes caused such madness?... which plugin? Let ol' wiski have a looksie... (link me, plz?) I'm thinkin' it's possible that things were fux0r3d before the d/l, and it's just a coinky-dink that **** hit the fan afterwards...

nihil, yes to all four questions.
no beeps on bootup.
I tried the windows recoevery console, whoch woud only let me access HD:\WINDOWS
I tried a NTFS4DOS boot disk http://www.freewarefiles.com/program_9_90_11100.html (there's also an official site for it, but his one is nicer) ( I d/l-ed it from the official site)


bagggi, I've got like 6 users on this PC because it's used by the whole family (I'm too poor to afford my own). So should I do this to all users? May as well I suppose. Once I've repoluated my start menu I can clone it over to everyone else's start menu.


wiskic10_4, I d/l-ed the itunes multi-plugin http://www.aqua-soft.org/board/showthread.php?t=29035
the site's safe according to SiteAdvisor and AVG scanned the downloaded file as clean. The reson I suspect it is that it was fux0r3d like 5 minutes after the isntall and it was fine before. It's a bit of a mystery. At this point I'd think the d/l was probably okay. If you search those guy's forums you'll probably find my post there :)

okay bagggi, I'm having a bit of a problem with your advice. First of all, I did not see a "restart in msdos" option, so I used hte aformentioned ntfs4dos boot disk. I navigated to the folder you wanted, and did cd startup and then dir and got the return Volume in drive D: is system, file not found. So then I tried to deltree the entire startup folder and got the smae message. oddly enough, I was able to get a dir on all of startup's parent folders

one other little thing. I was going to do some points becuse you guys have been helping me, but wa confused. the little dialog syas something about assigning a percentage of my "full assignment". So what is my "full assignment" and how many points would a post like, say, bagggi's first post normally recieve? I don't want to put on way too few or way too many. Sorry for the dumb question.

I believe the actual option is "with command prompt" rather than MSDOS ;)

Your answers to my questions prove that it is not a hardware issue, it was the progressive deterioration and your comment that you were "totally unable" to start your box that threw me ;)

nihil is right

its called command promt (its been time since i had to do that,my fault)

anyway one more thing i forgot to ask before....does the computer restart after it shutdown.

if it does, then there is something in the start menu. otherwise you dont have to take that route

any error messages

usually after 2 days of no solution, i would format everything. but somehow i dont think thats the option here.

sorry nihil I'll watch my wording in the future

bagggi, is that "safe mode with command prompt"? Because that option still gives you the normal windows logon, just in safe mode, which is still useless to me now.

Just to clear thigns up.. if I try to log on it logs me out, it doesn not shut down. If I click the button to shut it down from the welcome screen, it will shut down normally and it does not automatically restart.

There are no error messages.

Like you, I'm thinking after 2 days I should probably just reformat. The only real pain is finding where that blasted outlook express stores its emails...

all this shouldnt happen.

are you sure its itunes you installed?

we are goin to try repairing windows..

insert windows cd (i hope that you have one)
startup
boot from cd
come to the screen where you have to choose where you want to put windows
it will tell you that there's already wondows loaded and ask you what to do
this part is tricky- it should ask you if you want to install "new windows" or repair old one"
choose to repair (i have seen that sometimes this screen doesnt comeup)

if at any time it asks you to format "stop everything and exit"

this option will delete the windows folder only and reinstall windows
all you saved files wil be intact

thanks mate, but I've already done that yesterday! And it didn't help.

Please read this and give it a try:

http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm

It has dug me out on one or two "weird happenings" occasions.

Incidentally, would I be right in thinking that ALL your family accounts have the same problem, including Administrator?

All right people, I've fixed it!! it's a bit of a long story but here goes...
A friend of minegave me this link
http://www.winxptutor.com/wsaremove.htm
under where it says "Logon - Logoff loop" it descrivbes a fix for this problem as allegedly cause by blazefind. basically this blazefind would create a file called wsaupdater.exe, and I guess alter the registry so that when you try to log on, the PC refers to this file instead of userinit.exe, the file that I guess is normally used when you log on. So the fix is that you would enter the recovery console and go to ?/windows/system32/ and issue the DOS command:
copy userinit.exe wsaupdater.exe
Now you'd ba able to log on, but you'd still have to fix the registry... no biggie.

But when I issued that command it didn't work. By doing dir wsaupdater,exe and then dir userinit.exe I dtermined that neither file even existed!

When I mentioned this over diner, my sister said 'Oh yeah, I got a message saying ewido had quarantined that userinit file..." Apparently Ewido anti-malware had found trojan.tanspy in userinit.exe and quarantined it, effectively removing it from my ?/windows/system32

Figuring userinit was probably necessary for logon, I got a frined to send a copy of it to me via IM. Then I put it ona floppy, went back to recovery console, put it back where it should be, and now I'm up and running again.

And it even fixed my browsers. (you may recall that a wierd problem with my web browser was the reason i started this thread)

Hah!

Now you know why we often just reformat and reinstall.............stuff that is in schools, libraries or shared home, you never know if you have been told all the information (just as in your case?) ;)

I am glad your sister actually read the message and remembered it. :D

Cheers