Hey everyone, I was hoping someone could give me some suggestions to fix my issue without having to wipe it clean and start over. Sorry if this isn't the correct format for this, btw. I don't know exactly what I did (well, kinda) and I've tried everything I can think of. Anyway, to the issue.
About three weeks ago, I had downloaded various media players I found online so I could watch certain tv shows that weren't on netflix. I knew it was a pretty dumb thing to do at the time and I don't know why I went ahead and did it. I downloaded around 3 of these and also another thing that would convert videos I took on my digital camera to a format that could be posted online (quicktime files were too big). I had absolutely no computer issues until the day after Christmas, when I decided that I didn't need any of these programs (except the video converter) and uninstalled them.
Prior to the uninstall, I could have multiple IE windows running, as well as windows media player and pretty much any other program I felt like running. Nothing was slow, nothing crashed, and everything was cool.
Post uninstall, WMP started being crazy slow. I had a 30 second lag time between songs. That was annoying, but I figured it was due to the fact that I was organizing everything. Soon after, IE windows started loading very slow and eventually they all started to crash. I was constantly getting those "IE has encountered an issue and must close" windows. I was annoyed enough that I bypassed IE and started using our firefox browser instead and had no issues. Everything loaded fine in firefox, but WMP was still running slow. Bringing up any other program (word, adobe, etc) caused the computer to freeze, except I still had mouse control. CTRL+ALT+DEL was always needed to get rid of every program except firefox, because they were not responding.
I've done a disc cleanup, defragmented the computer, did a search for any programs installed in the past two weeks (to see if I missed something), reinstalled WMP, and finally did a system restore and I'm still having issues.
We have ZoneAlarm, AVG, and SpyBot on the computer. Everything is up to date and I've ran multiple scans of the computer. A couple of days after this happened, AVG did find two trojains, but took care of them and I can't remember what they were.
One thing I found today was that on a restart the computer states that it's found new hardware that it wants to install, but I'm not aware of anything new on the computer. Doesn't mean my husband hasn't added anything and I just don't know, but I seriously doubt it. I have no idea if that's related or not.
Computer wise, we're running XP. Not sure what specs you'd need, but the computer specs say it's an AMD 3000+, 1.8 GHz, 2 GB Ram. The C drive has a capacity of 176 GB and when I went to do defrag and do a system restore it wouldn't let me because it was maxed out. I mentioned this to my husband and he seemed shocked, because last he checked, there was more than enough room.
Anyone have any ideas? I think it's pretty clear I've downloaded some nonsense, but I'm at a loss for what else to do. Since this is a custom built computer, I don't want to mess with too much and my computer skills are apparently lacking.
Thanks for reading if you're around on New Years Eve!
About three weeks ago, I had downloaded various media players I found online so I could watch certain tv shows that weren't on netflix. I knew it was a pretty dumb thing to do at the time and I don't know why I went ahead and did it. I downloaded around 3 of these and also another thing that would convert videos I took on my digital camera to a format that could be posted online (quicktime files were too big). I had absolutely no computer issues until the day after Christmas, when I decided that I didn't need any of these programs (except the video converter) and uninstalled them.
Prior to the uninstall, I could have multiple IE windows running, as well as windows media player and pretty much any other program I felt like running. Nothing was slow, nothing crashed, and everything was cool.
Post uninstall, WMP started being crazy slow. I had a 30 second lag time between songs. That was annoying, but I figured it was due to the fact that I was organizing everything. Soon after, IE windows started loading very slow and eventually they all started to crash. I was constantly getting those "IE has encountered an issue and must close" windows. I was annoyed enough that I bypassed IE and started using our firefox browser instead and had no issues. Everything loaded fine in firefox, but WMP was still running slow. Bringing up any other program (word, adobe, etc) caused the computer to freeze, except I still had mouse control. CTRL+ALT+DEL was always needed to get rid of every program except firefox, because they were not responding.
I've done a disc cleanup, defragmented the computer, did a search for any programs installed in the past two weeks (to see if I missed something), reinstalled WMP, and finally did a system restore and I'm still having issues.
We have ZoneAlarm, AVG, and SpyBot on the computer. Everything is up to date and I've ran multiple scans of the computer. A couple of days after this happened, AVG did find two trojains, but took care of them and I can't remember what they were.
One thing I found today was that on a restart the computer states that it's found new hardware that it wants to install, but I'm not aware of anything new on the computer. Doesn't mean my husband hasn't added anything and I just don't know, but I seriously doubt it. I have no idea if that's related or not.
Computer wise, we're running XP. Not sure what specs you'd need, but the computer specs say it's an AMD 3000+, 1.8 GHz, 2 GB Ram. The C drive has a capacity of 176 GB and when I went to do defrag and do a system restore it wouldn't let me because it was maxed out. I mentioned this to my husband and he seemed shocked, because last he checked, there was more than enough room.
Anyone have any ideas? I think it's pretty clear I've downloaded some nonsense, but I'm at a loss for what else to do. Since this is a custom built computer, I don't want to mess with too much and my computer skills are apparently lacking.
Thanks for reading if you're around on New Years Eve!