well all of the applications crash in XP, so posting it here I am working as system engineer in a factory. one of the users is facing frequent applications crashes. The applications that crash include outlook 2003, excel 2003, mcafee scan (mcafee 8.7i patch 4 daily updated,), and sometimes even explorer.exe crashes. i dont know if pc is infected or not as whenever i try to run full scan of mcafee, it will crash after say 10-15 minutes. no bad sectors on C: drive. there are 4 KB bad sectors on F: drive which on second hard disk. i ran combofix, it scanned said rootkit activity found and rstarted and then continued scanning, but applications still keep crashing. i have used malwarebytes, it too crashes after 20-30 minutes. i am frustrated as i could not resolve this issue in last 20 days. any ideas..?
the crash means a pop up comes that says this application has failed and do you want to send an error report to microsoft etc. if i click on debug, send or dont send, it will close the application. eventvwr shows that instant as being due to some faulty dll. i have reinstalled office 2003 and mcafee many times on different drives, but problem persists.
memtest thnx i have used memory test from microsoft. downloaded it and burnt it to a cd, then booted from it. ran normal as well extended tests overnight. but it did not find any issue with memory. I think he memory is alright. If i have bad sectors on D: drive and my OS and all software installations are on C:, should it create problem even if i am not using that drive at all?
Have you run malwarebytes from within windows or from safe mode. When trying to rid yourself of Trojans or viruses, it's recommended to run from safe mode since many of the drivers and system files they use to protect themselves do not get loaded in safe mode. There is also a non-destructive install operation you can run as long as you have a good retail XP disk handy. XP SP3 is best since all your system files will be replaced from the disk and using an SP1 means a ton of critical updates will have to be downloaded. XP SP3 with criticals integrated to a recent date is preferable for that reason. When you boot to the XP install disk it see's you have an operating system already and offers a repair option (recovery console) but this one is not non-destructive. So, if you continue on as if your going to reinstall from scratch the second install option shows right after the F8 accept license. It might not show up with an OEM disk and definitely not with a recovery disk. You can read more about it if you Google "non-destructive reinstall of XP" and look for the Langa Letters on the informationweek web site.
some updates from my side: i tried installing office 2003, scanning with mcafee and malwarebytes all in safe mode. they still crah in safe mode i tried sfc /scannow. it did not help. my applications are still creashing. so i created a new partition on second hard disk and installed windows xp on it. i.e. i created dual boot system with 2 XP installations. I had already written combofix, malwarebytes, mcafee+dat update file on a CD. after installing new XP, i straight away copied combofix to desktop and scanned the PC. nothing was found. so i installed mcafee+update. scanned and to my horror, the scan crashed!!!!! i had the network cable removed till this point. the system is infection free...I can say that with confidence. Still my applications keep crashing with a pop to send an error report to microsft. My life is screwed.
I would guess you are infected dude. Just because you put a new build on it it doesn't mean its virus free (I assume you connected to network to update so yeah that's my point). I would guess there is malware on it, your best bet is to back up the users data and wipe it totally as you dual booted the infection from the first partition could easily replicate to the 2nd new partition. It could even be simple overheating, blow dust out if you can. May even be a corrupted hard drive. Run the HDD manufacturers diagnostic tool on it (preferably the boot CD version). Also... is your windows up to date with all the security patches? You haven't stated if it is x86 or x64 either. These days you need at least SP3 installed with XP, personally my company is migrating to Windows 7 now but there will be issues with legacy software.
those were good points. 1. infections: will it be good if i remove HDD and scan on another PC? 2. Overheating: interesting- i checked the CPU temp, its 80 C+ 3. HDD is alright: I already checekd it and no bad sectors. 4. I run x86 machine with Windows XP SP3 with auto update enabled and i always install whatever updates/patches MS provides. I Guess I am gonna try and clean CPU fan, also will try to remove heatsink. clean the processor,apply new heatsink compund and test. will get back soon with those results. (In the meantime, please pray for me )