Problems with XP

B

briankrg

New Member
I’ve been having some serious problems running XP. Last night I ran the Eraser program to clean unused space on my C drive. I left it running overnight. This morning AVG antivirus ran automatically. Immediately after I started getting an error for any program I tried to run or any file Itried to open; “sample text .* is not a valid win32 application”.

I get the same error when trying to run programs through the Start menu or through the Start>Run command, however, I am able to use Task Manager to run programs & opwn files.

Everything that normally launches when I stat up has also stopped launching. In addition, when I attempt to shut down or restart I get the error “You do not have permission to shut down or restart this computer”. So I have had to restart manually via the power button. Tried running an additional virus scan after updating AVG, as well as updating & running a-squared Deep Scan. Chkdsk with the /f switch didn’t help either.

I also just noticed that I can only type text in any text field for 3-5 seconds before having to click inside the field again as the cursor disappears.

Does anyone know what the problem is? Did I wipe out vital files with Eraser?

Please help!

Matt
 
Hi briankrg

Welcome to the forum.

I am really sorry that you are having problems with Eraser. Can I just ask which version of Eraser you are using and which erase method you used ?

Thanks.
 
Overwriter said:
Hi briankrg

Welcome to the forum.

I am really sorry that you are having problems with Eraser. Can I just ask which version of Eraser you are using and which erase method you used ?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Thanks for getting back so fast, Overwriter. I'm running ver5.85. I ran the task "data/unused space on drive local disk (c:).

Matt
 
Hi Matt.

When you say “task” do you mean schedule ?

Also what overwriting method did you use ? Could it have been the first and last 2KB one ?

Thanks
 
Overwriter said:
Hi Matt.

When you say “task” do you mean schedule ?

Also what overwriting method did you use ? Could it have been the first and last 2KB one ?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I just opened the program, clicked file, New Task, then clicked OK. The default setting was Unused Space on Local Disk (c: ).

I was running it in on Demand mode & in my Preferences I had all the Overwrite options checked (Free Disk Space & Master File Table Record, Cluster Tip Area & Directory Entries). I had Pseudorandom Data selected as the overwrite method (one pass).
 
How old is your computer (specifically your hard disk) and how full is your hard disk?

Does your AVG scan interrupt other programs? Did the scan run after the erase pass completed?

Eraser uses documented methods to write data to your disk and hence it is very unlikely that Eraser can screw up your computer this bad. I'm suspecting that either AVG handles files wrongly (which is a legitimate concern - anti virus programs are known to change Windows internals), or your hard disk is old (which results in errors being written to disk).

The symptoms you describe seem to be that of registry corruption. Can you try to boot into Safe mode and re-create your user account?

Joel

*Safe mode: press F8 before the Windows logo appears, log into the account called Administrator.
 
I just got this computer about a month ago and have only used a few gigs on a 300 GB hard drive. AVG doesn't interrupt other programs and it scanned after the Eraser process was completed. I tried creating a new Admin account from Safe mode but it's giving me the same errors...on a positive note I can type properly again without having to constantly click in the text field...
 
Interesting - I really don't know. I'd be certain it's Eraser or AVG if the scan started as Eraser was wiping the disk clean; but if you said it's after, then I'd really have no idea what's going on, sorry.
 
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