Random shut down, scan disk, error

[brendale]

Hello everyone. 1st post and I've got a rather large problem that I've not been able to find any information online, or searching here for.

I'm running Windows XP SP2, and randomly it will shut down, then perform a scan disk (like when you don't shut down correctly), and then boot up with the message "Windows has recovered from a serious error".

It was only doing it after I had opened the notebook from hibernation, but now it is doing it even from clean boot ups.

I have gone into the next screen and have attached the details I have been given. I have tried to search this error code on Microsoft support to no avail.

Ok, now I have to come clean and tell you when it started. I wanted to use WMP to play dvds, and as I didn't have a plug in on this notebook, and did have one on my PC, I tried to grab the program file from the PC and drop it into the program file on the notebook. It didn't work so I just deleted the same folders I added. But I tried clicking on the actual files to see if it would prompt the plug in to work. It changed the icons to WMA icons.

Anyway the next day, I managed to find my DVD player disc, which included the plug-in from Cyberlink, so I installed the dvd player, uninstalled it and just left the shared files (plug in for WMP which now works). This worked ok on my PC, so I think it's more what I did above, than this.

So somewhere there I seemed to have screwed something up.

I've done virus scans (various + onecare), spyware checks, windows update, everything. I did get a SP1 update though. Is this normal if I have SP2. I've checked system and I'm still showing SP2. My notebook is always clean, running up to date, fast all the time until this !!

Does anyone know how to help, or do I need to load my recovery discs?

If I do need to reload my OS, how do you save all your emails. It's the only thing I'm not sure on backing up. I have an external 300 gig HDD to use, so space is not a problem.

Thank you. btw, I'm a chick, so go easy on me for screwing it up. I'm doing my best. ;)

Oh forgot to add that I upgraded to WMP11 and it was working fine, but I rolled back to 10 just to see if it would fix the problem. It didn't.

[CurlyWhirly]

I've done virus scans (various + onecare), spyware checks, windows update, everything. I did get a SP1 update though. Is this normal if I have SP2. I've checked system and I'm still showing SP2.

Sorry I can't help you with your problem but I know that SP2 includes SP1 so it seems strange that Windows Update wanted to update you to SP1 when you already had SP2 on your PC

[brendale]

Oh I'm sorry, it didn't update SP1 specifically, it was as follows:

Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 1.1 Service Pack 1 (KB886903)

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1

It just seemed strange to me, as I haven't noticed an update mentioning SP1. My notebook come pre-installed with SP2.

Thanks.

[CurlyWhirly]

Oh I'm sorry, it didn't update SP1 specifically, it was as follows:

Security Update for Microsoft .NET Framework, Version 1.1 Service Pack 1 (KB886903)

Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 Service Pack 1

It just seemed strange to me, as I haven't noticed an update mentioning SP1. My notebook come pre-installed with SP2.

I think that's normal as I have had SP2 installed on my PC for ages and I can remember updating similar things.

I think that in the above examples, SP1 is referring to .NET and not Service Pack 1 which you are thinking of although I may be wrong.

Perhaps someone with more knowledge than me may be able to help with your problem - good luck :)

[brendale]

Thanks CurlyWhirly. These are the updates that I received, exactly as detailed on the Microsoft page in my history. I'm not up on what .NET is, so I have no idea. :(

Anyway, I ran another scan from Microsoft, a PC Clean scan to clean the registry files. There were 16 errors they could not fix. Perhaps I should have taken a screen shot of the report. If anyone thinks it would help I could run it again and supply the results.

But maybe this is the problem, in the registry? Is there possibly a better registry clean scan out there?

Thanks.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Ignore .NET - this is used only by some very few applications.

Anyway, I ran another scan from Microsoft, a PC Clean scan to clean the registry files.

I don't know of any Microsoft registry cleaner (except the Windows 9x Regclean; I hope you didn't run that on Windows XP!).

I do not recommend running "registry cleaners"; they usually do more damage than good.

I don't think that your problem is caused by a registry inconsistency. Can you tell us in what situation the error occurs (the image you have included in your first post)?

Also, can you open the Event Viewer and tell us if you find anything in there at the time when the error occurred?

[brendale]

The PC Clean scan is offered by Microsoft as part of their new online Live

Onecare virus software. It wasn't the one you mentioned.

But unfortunately I didn't see your message in time and run CClean. I did

however have a full day without this problem after running it. Then I tested hibernation, and

within an hour or so, it happened again.

There is no one thing that causes it. I can be working on the PC or it will

be on screen saver. It shuts off itself, reboots by itself, runs through the

disk scan, then once fully rebooted I get the error. I never get the error

at any other time.

I did think of overheating as an issue, but from my understanding it just

shuts off. It doesn't reboot itself, so I don't think this is the problem.

I am having trouble uploading the image of the event viewer at this time, but it says Service Control Manager before each error and seem to have 2 different ones, although I am always left with the same error.

They are System Error (102 in category), and DCOM (none in category). Today's was DCOM.

Would you need any further information?

Thanks.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

Is there any additional information in the Event Viewer, e.g. an EventID? (There are about 3000 DCOM errors listed in the Microsoft support site).

[brendale]

I am trying to upload the event manager list now.

Thanks again for your help Pat.

[brendale]

I have some more information which may be helpful. Mostly I'm not around when it does this shut down thing. The 1st thing I hear is the windows boot up music, and then I know it's done it again.

However tonight, I was sitting on the PC, and it flashed a blue screen (not full blue screen, it had text), but it was so fast there was no way of reading it.

Then whilst it ran through the disk scan it mentioned "not a valid file size" or similar on:

Nortons Internet Security/Norton AntiVirus/Savrt/????NAV~.TMP ( I didn't quite catch the number )

Ok, so I follow this path to discover 2 temp files created about the exact time the blue screen appeared and the PC shut off.

They were sitting in that folder as above, ????NAV~.TMP & ????NAV~.TMP, both created the exact same time, nothing in the size.

Now, they have been replaced by 2 files, 0564 (same extension) & 0637 (same extension), but at the time I have just booted up tonight, but at this stage without any errors or shutdowns.

Is this normal for Nortons? Because possibly this is the problem, but I didn't do anything or change any settings to Nortons before this problem started.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

I did not find anything for DCOM EventID 10010 that would cause a system crash; maybe it was a coincidence?

You mentioned the blue screen (BSOD?); did it show anything that would indicate the cause of the crash?

[-pops-]

Could this be yet another demonstration of the "Norton curse"?

[brendale]

Well it hasn't done it for 2 days, but then I haven't put my notebook into hibernation either. :D

It wasn't the full blue screen of death. It was a smaller blue pop-up window with text, but as I mentioned it was there for a blink of an eye, and shut down. There was no time to read it, or get a screen shot.

It appears something is causing Nortons to create this tmp file each time I boot up. But I'm not even sure if that's normal.

Now, after this boot up I only have one file, 0988NAV~.TMP sitting in the same location as where the others were.

I'm thinking it may be easier just to reload my OS. It started when I played around with the plug-ins for WMP, so I must have done something stupid then.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

If it's not a big deal for you to reinstall Windows, then I would do that.

And if you could find a better security application than Norton, that would be a great plus for your computer. There are dozens of free, better, and safer application than anything Norton. The Windows reinstall would be a good chance to get rid of Norton.

[brendale]

Thanks again Pat for your help. Nortons is part of the OS unfortunately. I did upgrade to the Internet Security as we had a 5 user pack anyway.

Does anyone know if the new Microsoft Live Onecare virus protection is any good? I have been testing it on my old PC, as that one doesn't really matter so much. It seems rather good so far. It does the whole package, viruses, defrags & cleans out unnecessary files automatically. It's the beta version, not available to buy in Australia yet.

But what do you guys recommend in a way of a good security software package? I don't mind paying, I'd rather do that and get a very good secure one.

I'd rather not reload the OS, as I have a web authoring program that when I restore the backup file, it does not reassociate the photos and I have well over 500. But it's something that can be a work in progress (again ).

Just to update, I've had another day with no issues at all. So tomorrow it seems it will be back to testing what happens after I hibernate. If it continues, seeya guys for a few days while I reload the OS. :lol:

It does seem sluggy though, icons seem to take a little longer to come back to life.

[-pops-]

I don't see how Norton is part of the OS.

If you have Norton installed you should NOT have another anti-virus program (One-care) installed at the same time - this is very likely to cause conflicts.

There is no need to pay anything for your computer security. Have a look in the Security section of this forum to see what is suggested by members here.

[brendale]

Nortons comes preloaded on the recovery disks that I have with my notebook. It's a 3 month trial version that is on a lot of OEM recovery disks. The only way to reload my OS is with the OEM recovery disks unfortunately, which includes this wonderful trial.

I don't have both on the notebook. I uninstalled Nortons from my old PC, and I am trialling the Windows Live Onecare on it, as I don't worry so much about security on it.

I'll check out the security section of the forum thanks.

Update, I've hibernated a few hours ago, and again no issues. I'm not sure if it somehow has fixed the issue itself, or perhaps by one of the scans I did.

Or am I speaking too soon. I'll keep you posted.

[ɹəuəllıʍ ʇɐb]

A note on Norton trialware. I have once, many years ago, foolishly installed some Norton trialware - I believe it was Norton Works. I didn't do much with it, and then completely forgot about it. And then some day I couldn't boot any more.

When turning the computer on, Windows would start to boot, and then - beep - BSOD, and the computer would turn itself off. This was the only time that I could not handle a computer malfunction myself. I got hold of a very knowledgeable Helpdesk guy, who helped me to install a diagnostic tool from floppy disk, then boot Windows under the control of that tool, which would write every step to a log.

It turned out that my wonderful Norton trial had expired that day, and Symantec punished me for not purchasing their product by disabling my computer!

[brendale]

Wow Pat, that is a bad situation. I'm never buying Nortons again, but as we had the 5 user pack, and my trial 3 months was over, I installed it as it was better than nothing, or so I thought. That's why I am trialling the Windows beta Onecare on my old PC, but I will read up on this forum before doing anything else re virus protection.

I'm still not having any issues after booting from hibernation since I last posted. That's been a good few hours.

I'm wondering when I do a disk cleanup and it clears out temp files, therefore possibly clearing this nortons temp file, then it's having a problem. I'll have to test that, but I think it only clears temp files that are in the temp folder. This one sits in a Savrt folder within Nortons program files.

To be perfectly honest, this is the first time I've had an issue with Windows that I couldn't fix too.

My sons notebook motherboard was replaced and it was a good opportunity to reload his OS (the recovery disks) and it said 'wrong machine'. I phoned the repair centre and they had no idea, but through a process of reading up on the Toshiba site, downloading an image file and burning it into a bootable disk, booting up with the burnt cd and following the instructions, then I had no issues and reloaded it with no problem. The only issue would be his OEM OS also has the 3 months trial of Nortons too which has not yet expired.

I tend to try and troubleshoot myself, googling, reading up before asking, but this one has me stumped too.

I will off course, have to do something if it continues, and it seems the obvious way out is to reload the recovery disks. You know of any way of getting around loading the Nortons trial software that's bundled with the OEM OS? I suppose there isn't, but thought I would ask all the same. The Messenger also bothers me as you cannot uninstall that, or not that I'm aware of anyway. You'd think when you upgrade your MSN it would recognise this and do away with the OEM pre-loaded version.