My Computer Crashed

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Today my computer crashed, I was logging into the guest account and got a message saying there was a problem with the system's security and to contact a computer repair person if the problem persisted. Anyhow, when I finally got into the account, the computer had set itself back to factory settings asking if I wanted a tour of XP and so on. My pic's, doc's and other downloads where all wiped. I suddenly started to freak and then decided to turn of the PC and restart, everything came back to normal, I think.

I still wonder though if there is something bigger wrong, a trojan maybe.

Btw...Hi again everyone!

Welcome back to WP!

Tim

Probably something to do with the guest account. XP probably got confused and created another temporary guest account, or something similar.

Maybe that's what happened, nothing like that has ever happened in the 4yr's I've had it. I am running avast and it is slugging along, not working like normal. I am going to do a log file and send it to a friend to have a look at, maybe something got trough.

I missed you a whole bunch

Hey kilroy missed ya too, back with a clearer mind now

The same thing happened to my girlfriends dads computer with these
specs.
Windows XP Pro
1.7 Ghz Celeron Processor
256MB PCI266 DDR Memory
40GB WD Hard Drive

For one over 30GB of his hard drive was full of crap. [He says his Google Toolbar is his luck charm.] What you might need to do is this.

1.Get a Antivirus Program Like AVG or Avast.
2. Clean up your regristry with CCleaner.
[Internet Cookies can take up 2GB of your hard drive.]
3. Get all useless programs off you computer.[Including toolbars.]
4. Clean up your hard drive
5. Get a good firewall program like Outpost Professioal.
[ It is only $50.00 for a lifetime subscription.]
6. Clear out all user accounts.
7. Never have websites remember passwords.[Hackers.]

System Specs-
Windows XP
512mb DDR Memory
2.8 GHz P4 processor
120gb hard drive.

I have 3 toolbars, bookmarks which I use allot, Nav which is needed and Google which I also use but don't really require.

I have Avast Anti virus and AVG Spyware.
I also have CCleaner and used it not to long ago.
All the cookies are gone.
Did a defrag about 4 days ago.
Using Comodo as a firewall and also use Ad-aware.

The message had something about the system security settings, but I can't remember the rest as it did a count down for 30 secs and then the message went.

The free version of Outpost is still available here, get it before it's gone: http://majorgeeks.com/download1056.html

Firstly, why does anyone want to run a firewall, other than the standard XP/SP2 one? It's not going to do anything for you.

Secondly, cookies never take 2GBytes. They are limited to 32Kbytes per site, so you'd need to visit... 64,000 sites to get that much cookie usage.

Thirdly, why are people scared of cookies? (Provided you get rid of the irritating ones, by using Spybot/AdAware, the majority are GOOD.)

What does annoy me is how people leave their cache set at a default size that is ridiculously large. This is the 2GBytes stuff - it isn't cookies, it's all the html and images from every website you've ever visited since you got the machine. The cache is supposed to improve speed, by only downloading stuff when it has changed. A huge cache (I personally have this one set as... 50Mbytes), like 2GBytes, takes longer to scan, looking for a tiny gif file, say, than it would to download the thing in the first place!

On this machine, I'm not at all fussy, and I have 950 cookies, totalling 108,547 bytes (raw ASCII). On my XP, there seem to be only 363, totalling 39,382 bytes, but I'm not using that much and between them, Spybot and AdAware drop a load of them.

Now you bring in the registry, and that's a whole different kettle of fish - see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/292726. Nowadays, there is no limit on the overall size of the registry. There is now no limit on the amount of data a single application can choose to store in there. If a program wishes to use it to store a huge database, it can. I have no idea what CCleaner can do about that, until you uninstall the application.

Going to windows update and updating system files is a way to prevent crashing. Uninstalling unsed Windows application that requires the internet like MSN Network, messanger and outlook express. IIt opens up your computer to security holes.