System Restore, Viruses and Internet Problems

[Lindy]

Ok, three in one.

First, is it really THAT terrible to get rid of System Restore?

I never use it, it harbours viruses and Norton or any other virus scanner can't get rid of them because Windows won't ACTUALLY let me have access to it.

But, I got fed up, disabled System Restore, *StMgr in startup and deleted all of the System Restore folder.

Now I need to know, will anything OH GOD TERRIBLE happen?

Second, I have a problem with my internet connection, or rather, my computer. Every so often, like every 30 or 40 minutes of connection, it dies. I get total lag, nothing works and so I have to restart. It's not my connection because I recently switched from a 56k dial-up to 512k ADSL and it still has the same problem.

I've scanned for viruses and disabled all un-needed system startups that could be hiding viruses (Note, the horrible SysTray auto-start is actually the Bigfoot virus, not the real SysTray, but for some reason virus scanners don't seem to be able to find it).

So the question is, what's causing it, and could it be a virus that I haven't found yet? Or something else? And what the heck can I do, I'd quite like to be able to just leave my connection on, rather than restart.

Oh, and I have a 1ghz Athlon and 128mb ram.

[-N-]

Unne: Uninstall windows.

Arche: Put a strong magnet next to your harddrive.

Now that's out of the way...

1. Nothing terrible should happen as a result of disabling System Restore - but in the event your computer gets totally screwed by a virus, you obviously can't restore it to a previous state. I'm not surprised Windows wouldn't let you access it, but I'm curious as to how it harbors viruses, as I've never had a problem with it. I've never had any problems with it, really, so I'm wondering what exactly went wrong with yours and whether I need to be aware of it. But anyways, nothing bad should happen. Just keep your OS cd around, and backup your special important files.

2. I'm assuming you mean restart your computer... I used to have a problem similar to this with my wireless card, and what I did was disallow Windows to automatically configure my wireless settings, and then it maintained my connection permanently. I don't know if there's an analogous or isomorphic operation of that to your situation here. I get the feeling it may be a hardware issue with your computer's modem - maybe it can't handle the quantity of data you're downloading and uploading and result in a buffer overflow. Usually when that happens, it shuts down and you have to restart the modem or your computer.

And you may want to try AdAware for more indepth scanning and stuff - I've found it to be more effective.

[Lindy]

Right, well, for one viruses are often backed up cleverly by Windows into System Restore, because apparently it's a smart thing to do. An oft tactic is just to hide in the .cpy archives, since the average user can't do anything about it or even think about looking there because it's apparently "safe".

It's a far smarter idea to disable it, disable *StMgr and keep a manual backup of your hard-disc on a removable device like a Zip Drive or an extra hard disc, since if it's kept on your hard disc, it can be affected by anything that affects your hard disc, simple idea I guess.

And it can't be the modem, since it's an external, brand new Sagem ADSL modem, so why would it have the same problem?

I also currently use Ad-Aware. And Spybot.

Could you explain where the disallow windows to automatically configure stuff thing is, since windows doesn't like people thinking for themselves and using things the way they want to.

I'm using Windows ME by the way, so that in itself may be the problem.

[-N-]

I'm using Windows ME by the way, so that in itself may be the problem.

*runs*

I'm using XP Pro, so I really have no idea. Erm, maybe try Control Panel -> Manage Network Connections? You can edit properties there... Past that, I have no experience at all with ME, so I guess I'll leave it to others.

And I was thinking you may have an internal modem, since most computers come with 56k internal modems these days and you said you just switched from 56k. Yeah, that modem shouldn't have a problem, then.

[crono_logical]

I believe I've never suggested anything to do with magnets


Anyway, I always kill System Restore, never had problems with doing that. As for the modem thing, might just be a bad hardware combination - same thing happens with our (external) modem here. It does similar to what you described when it's on my dad's PC and so we used an alternate (internal) modem for that machine, but it works fine on my PC Internal modems are generally more stable than external in my experience.

[Lindy]

But the point is, that it was happening with my internal modem and now it's happened with my external.

I THINK I have it sorted.

I deleted all my TCP/IP protocols and started again setting them up.

I had too many, namely a few set aside for PGP VPN Adaptors and such, and now they've gone it seems to work fine.

I even added in IPX support too, for the heck of it.

[Dr Unne]

I say "reinstall Windows" as honest advice. It's the easiet way to fix Windows problems, and sometimes it's the only way. If your Registry gets messed up or clogged up, you're screwed, and any old program in the world has full access to your Registry. If something in your startup sequence gets messed up, you're screwed, because you'll never know what's wrong, because Windows displays a big blue shiny graphic instead of saying what it's doing when it boots. If some of your system files get corrupted, you're screwed, because Windows has "wizards", and wizards do what they do and choke when something goes wrong, and hand-fixing device drivers or Windows DLLs is far beyond the capability of everyone I know. Windows doesn't give you enough information to fix most problems. When something just stops working seemingly at random, you have no way of fixing it short of telepathy or blind luck.

Reinstalling Windows takes less than an hour, and if you do it right (backing up your home directories and saved/custom info from Program Files) you lose nothing. Backup, manually delete Program Files and whatnot, reinstall Windows, then reinstall all the programs you use to have, and there you go. It puts Windows back to a fully-working non-messed-up state (as close as Windows gets to one). It's just not worth the trouble looking for solutions to a lot of Windows problems, because a vast amount of them are NOT fixable. I worked at a lab with hundreds of Windows machines, and when anything went wrong with any of them, they stuck in a CD, wiped the hard drive and put a fresh image on it.

So, reinstall Windows.

[Lindy]

For one, I can't, since I check my system restore disc that came with my PC, and hey, it says it won't work with my configuration.

So I'll just get a copy of Windows XP, back up my stuff and re-install.

But for now, everything is working fine again.

And in fact, all my problems that I used to have are now sorted, by careful tweaking of startup and finally using windows update.

I no longer have so many random crashes, and it works ok for now.

I WILL reinstall fairly soon, but not right now because everything is going ok.

And besides, when I'm at university, I'll take the time to learn Linux, and then I'll get it on my laptop (or rather when I get a laptop), try a few distros and see how that goes. Then, if that works fine, I'll work it onto my desktop PC and replace windows totally if possible.

[Baloki]

Whats your Broadband service provider because BT provide a freephone help number if you have line problems