I have problems with my PC

[tazdavid]

I am not sure where to begin, so many issues. I have a Windows 7, SP1 PC. I believe it's 64 bit. It has the AMD phenom II 511 dual core processor. It's an HP s5730f model, in case you want to know.  Actually a few months ago Windows repair helped fix problems I was having, now I have some that are the same and some new ones, hope you can help. I will mention a tech expert initially, remotely went into my computer to fix the problems and couldn't and I was going to reformat my PC, but found Win Repair and that fixed those problems. That was a few months ago. At the present time I have tried running a program called PC scan and repair by reimage. It gets to a point after finding one piece of adware from Adobearm and mentions some programs that have recently crashed. It gets to checking the registry and then just hangs there for a long time until I abort. Anyway, to the most recent issues, First I am having trouble with Itunes. When I click on the Itunes icon I get this message: The registry settings used by the itunes drivers for importing and burning CDs and DVDs are missing. This can happen as a result of installing other CD burning software. Please reinstall Itunes. On this I did a reinstall, even uninstalled completely and reinstalled. I have not installed other CD burning software. I thought of putting the registry to a time when it was working ok, but haven't yet. It will open Itunes, but I can't play any music. I click on a file and shows it as the song playing but nothing else. I have an issue with WMP. It says version 12.0.7601.17514. It says there is no updates for it. When I try to play anything I  get a message that says WMP encountered a problem while playing the file. Something similar happens with Real Player Cloud. Some video files RP will play, most it won't. It does play audio files, seems to be about the only thing that plays audio files, other than on the Internet. Up until recently I was able to update Java, not anymore, it opens the file and I click run and it just hangs. I have had problems updating Adobe Flash Player. As of now I haven't been told to update that, so I am not sure if I can update that if I needed to. QuickTime Player has an issue when I try to open any video file. I get an error message that says: Error 2048: Couldn't open the file(whatever file I am trying to open), because it is not a file that QuickTime understands. It opens audio files, but no sound comes out. I just tried getting help from A part of windows called the Action Center and reports on errors and such. It told me that it had a problem connecting to the Windows Error Reporting service. Some of the reports could not be uploaded and try again later. That's what I can think of at the moment. Any help would be appreciated.  David

[Boggin]

Are you able to download the free version of MBAM to run a scan with that https://www.malwarebytes.org/

[scarsxp]

I would suggest running a anti virus/anti spyware program as well. Spybot search and destroy or malware bytes. Not sure what type of anti virus you are running, but make sure it's reputable

And before you install programs such as itunes. I would suggest running them through virustotal.com to see if there is a bunch of adware junk on it. Or really any program at all. I'm not too familiar with itunes, or how it works. But it sounds like junkware. You could get an itunes alternative that doesn't have adware and a bunch of stuff you don't need.

As for your video problems. I got a more practical solution for you, download Media Player Classic. And Combined Community Codec Pack (which will have all your decoders you probably need). Many people use MPC over windows media player. And if you are trying to play Real player files. You can install Real Alternative. And then you should be able to play those files through media player classic. MPC should be able to play almost any video file type.

It's more practical then using 4 to 5 video players and trying to update them all the time. You shouldn't have to update a player so often.

Also, for your connection issues. Do you have a firewall/router?

[Shane]

The first thing we need to do is make sure it isnt hardware related. If the drive has bad sectors it would explain what is going on, so would an infection.

First do a chkdsk on the drive, open a cmd.exe window as administrator and type in

chkdsk c: /f /r

Hit enter, it will say the drive is in use and would you like to schedule it,  hit Y and enter.

Now reboot. The scan should start before windows starts, if it doesn't try it again. Once the scan starts go have your self some coffee because depending on the size of the drive this could take a few hours or longer. It will scan and check every sector on the drive.

Once it is done it will reboot and windows will load up, you can go to the event viewer to look at the log and to see if it found any bad sectors.

If there are no bad sectors then the next thing to do is scan the system. I use malwarebytes anti rootkit a lot, it finds all the things that the normal one does and more. But the one I have found to find the truly hidden infections has been combofix, so give it a try as well
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/

Let me know how it goes

Shane

[tazdavid]

Actually, I forgot to mention a few things and boggin and scarsxp reminded me. I did run Malwarebytes and it found nothing wrong. I ran it within the last month, maybe 2 weeks ago. I am using Avast for my anti virus. I know it might not be the best, but it does catch potential threats that I have seen. It will say threat has been detected and I see a pop up and it tells me that it blocked the attempt and I don't need to do anything. Anyway, they do have other programs that cost money, but do more than just Antivirus. Thanks for the info scarsxp on  MPC, I will try that and the Codec. Where do I find that program, MPC.com? I will try and Google it. As far as Itunes I use an Ipad and Ipod and I sync with Itunes alot and also use a peer to peer site to get music and it's easy to put into Itunes. Now would an Itunes alternative allow me to do this? I am going to try virustotal to see what that does with Itunes. I figure I don't need a Real Player alternative if I install MPC and that plays the video files I need to play. I am using Windows Firewall and it's set to block all programs that are not on the list of allowed programs and it's set to notify me when it blocks a program. Shane, I did the option on the Windows Repair v2.8.5 to see if I needed to run chkdsk and it said I did not unless that's not the same as what you said in your reply. I will look into combofix also. Just try one thing at a time. Let me know any other info you need or any other advice after giving you the info I just did. Thanks so much for what you have told me so far, it does help. I will let you know what happens after trying these things.

[tazdavid]

I installed MPC and combined community codec and still some video files would not load. It would say can't render the file. I looked into virustotal and it checks files 64 MB or smaller, so I am not sure how it can scan Itunes. I have Many GB of music files, so that take a long while. There was an option to download something that would make it easier to check the files, but I didn't do that at least not yet. I had trouble trying to download Combofix, including ads popping up and when it was going to download I had to click on something that said if it doesn't start downloading automatically, click here. Then when it was installing it had an error about the integrity of something and would not install. Of course in between all of this my Avast Antivirus was saying, threat detected often enough and I had to allow the combofix program to start installing, because Avast said it's not a normally used file. In the end it wouldn't install because of what I said above. I did run across another program that downloaded with MPC, called PC utilities pro-Optimizer Pro. Anyone heard of it. It scanned my computer and found alot of stuff wrong including registry entries to clean and all sorts of other things that seem possible. Of course it's not free, but when I was leaving their page they offered me 50% off to buy the program. It would be $15. Not sure I should do it or not.

[Boggin]

Leave any tune up programs like that well alone as they will always find things to clean and quite often because of the indiscriminate way they clean the registry, you'll end up with a screwed system.

MSRT will scan a file for you but it only does one at a time.

[scarsxp]

I installed MPC and combined community codec and still some video files would not load. It would say can't render the file. I looked into virustotal and it checks files 64 MB or smaller, so I am not sure how it can scan Itunes. I have Many GB of music files, so that take a long while. There was an option to download something that would make it easier to check the files, but I didn't do that at least not yet. I had trouble trying to download Combofix, including ads popping up and when it was going to download I had to click on something that said if it doesn't start downloading automatically, click here. Then when it was installing it had an error about the integrity of something and would not install. Of course in between all of this my Avast Antivirus was saying, threat detected often enough and I had to allow the combofix program to start installing, because Avast said it's not a normally used file. In the end it wouldn't install because of what I said above. I did run across another program that downloaded with MPC, called PC utilities pro-Optimizer Pro. Anyone heard of it. It scanned my computer and found alot of stuff wrong including registry entries to clean and all sorts of other things that seem possible. Of course it's not free, but when I was leaving their page they offered me 50% off to buy the program. It would be $15. Not sure I should do it or not.

When I said scan itunes, I just meant scan the .exe file that actually installs the program. I do that with any new programs I install. You can use itunes if it's safe.

Hmm to run combofix, maybe you need to temporarily disable Avast. Some anti virus programs don't like it when you install other ones.

I use MPC-HC version 1.7.4. It should come with the community codec pack already. Also what web browser are you using?
 If you have firefox, you can download ad block plus. If you don't like advertisements. And that will also help protect you against malware.

What video files are these you are trying to run? What extension do they have? Maybe they are quicktime videos or real media videos. Which don't automatically work with media player classic (if I recall) without installing the filters.


Pro-Optimizer Pro = not sure of the integrity on registry cleaners. Some apps like to fake people, by indicating they have problems with their registry. When they don't really have any problems at all. I would stay away from that.


Back to your original problem in hand. It might not be bad a idea to check on hardware. Run a chkdsk, not sure what the deal is with
Windows Repair v2.8.5. You might still want to run it.

As for your itunes, problem. I did a little searching and found some feedback here:

http://en.kioskea.net/forum/affich-77186-itunes-registry-settings-missing

"it may be with a 3rd party product causing a problem."

[tazdavid]

Alright, latest update, I decided to run Malwarebytes again and it first needed to update, then while scanning it found alot of things, but alot if not all came after installing MPC, community Codec and this Optimizer Pro which I did not authorize, but I think that snuck in on one of the others downloads. Then Malwarebytes stopped for some reason and when I ran it again it said it had to download something, I forget what it was and then it needed a restart, but I said not to at the time because I was doing surveys that I do on a regular basis. I should mention in all of this I keep getting pop ups from the same sites and I know they are due to some adware that I even got rid of from the ad/remove programs, but is still doing it, so that slows things down. Hopefully after a restart Malwarebytes will fix things. I have MPC version 1.7.6. I am using Internet Explorer 9. I know it's outdated, but hate installing new versions of something and then have more problems. As far as chkdsk is concerned I never ran it,I did the check to see if it needed to be done. When I restart next time I will run it anyway. Some of the video files were WMV files and I tried changing a few to MPC files, but did not help. Some are AVI files, Flash and some are MPEG files. Some say Movie Clip. I had installed a program called DivX some time ago when Windows Media Player had problems, so a few show that icon and are DivX files and some have that icon but say AVI file. A few videos are Quicktime type. I do have Real Player and Quicktime installed by the way. That's quite a number of file types I know, but it's years of videos. As far as filters for MPC that are Quicktime or Real Media or anything else, where can I get that? Ok, now I am going to try that possible fix for Itunes in the registry like the link to the forum site says. I will update anything else later and Thanks again.

[tazdavid]

One of the solutions to fix Itunes on that site worked. Hooray! Got one. I was able to update Java which actually was weird. It just popped up after a restart to update and it worked. Chkdsk didn't find anything major, at least didn't mention it. Ran Malwarebytes again and seemed to ge to a point and get hung up. I was looking at the window and when I minimized it, it disappeared, but is still running in Task Manager and is really slowing my PC, but I got Itunes . Maybe tomorrow I will bother with the MPC program and video files, but kind of tired, so until then Thanks everyone for your help.

[Shane]

Did you ever run combofix yet? I read all the posts after my last one, but there was a lot to read so I might of missed it if you said you ran it lol

Shane

[tazdavid]

I did mention it in other posts. I tried to run it but had some issues, didn't try blocking my antivirus program to see if it would then let me install, maybe later I will try that.

[scarsxp]

Alright, latest update, I decided to run Malwarebytes again and it first needed to update, then while scanning it found alot of things, but alot if not all came after installing MPC, community Codec and this Optimizer Pro which I did not authorize, but I think that snuck in on one of the others downloads.

Well, CCCP is totally clean. If you downloaded it from the right place:

http://www.cccp-project.net/download.php?type=cccp
https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/37e631f069fb39a8e4cf423d77a637c26f0467bb20c04d9876c6367148068bf7/analysis/

It was probably Optimizer Pro?

I am using Internet Explorer 9. I know it's outdated, but hate installing new versions of something and then have more problems. As far as chkdsk is concerned I never ran it,I did the check to see if it needed to be done.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I hate updating programs also. But a browser is very important. And that could be the root cause of most infections. I don't trust internet explorer 9, and would strongly recommend against it. Firefox you can get a lot more security. And you can get ad block plus.

Try to get combofix to work if you want then also.

I also would recommend spybot search and destroy. Install it and update it, and then run it. It doesn't run in the background, it's not intrusive. It's simple and easy to use. And it usually doesn't annoy you with restarts. Unless you are removing some registry keys.

Some of the video files were WMV files and I tried changing a few to MPC files, but did not help. Some are AVI files, Flash and some are MPEG files. Some say Movie Clip. I had installed a program called DivX some time ago when Windows Media Player had problems, so a few show that icon and are DivX files and some have that icon but say AVI file. A few videos are Quicktime type. I do have Real Player and Quicktime installed by the way. That's quite a number of file types I know, but it's years of videos.

Yeah, it's time to get this organized. You can start uninstalling those players if you wish, when you get MPC to work.
Media player classic should be able to run wmv video files if I recall. And most of the files you are talking about.
Do some research on that.
Also open up mpc-hc
and go to view > options > External filters.
Add filter , add LAV Audio decoder, add LAV Video decoder, add Haali Media Splitter.
After you added them. Click on each one and select "prefer" on the right. And make sure they are all check marked. Click okay.

You can download real alternative here:
http://www.techspot.com/downloads/105-real-alternative.html
https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e2b19dd6855d3be8c8ae60ee0f7e38f5912416fbe2a5448b5b36fb6263d93117/analysis/

This link seems to be clean, some reason I was finding bad versions with adware on them.
But only install the direct show filter and codecs, and nothing else.

[tazdavid]

I couldn't find the external filters you mentioned scarsxp. The LAV audio and video decoder and Haali media splitter. There were a bunch of others including Real Player and Quicktime. After restarting again to force Malwarebytes to quit, everything seems mostly back to normal. For some reason I couldn't make Malwarebytes quit in the task manager, it was stuck or something. I wonder what other External Filters would help in MPC to view the videos. I do have Firefox, by the way and have had issues with that also at times, so I don't really use it. I will also mention that after the first restart from when I fixed Itunes my Avast antivirus showed me the adware programs that had caused me some issues and I removed them from there. That helped. I guess I have to decide about downloading combofix and the other programs or not. After the issues with Malwarebytes just now, not sure what I want to do.

[scarsxp]

I couldn't find the external filters you mentioned scarsxp. The LAV audio and video decoder and Haali media splitter. There were a bunch of others including Real Player and Quicktime. After restarting again to force Malwarebytes to quit, everything seems mostly back to normal. For some reason I couldn't make Malwarebytes quit in the task manager, it was stuck or something. I wonder what other External Filters would help in MPC to view the videos. I do have Firefox, by the way and have had issues with that also at times, so I don't really use it.

Did you install CCCP? Those have the decoders (filters) needed to run codecs.  It has Haali Media Splitter, And Lav audio and video decoders.

That helped. I guess I have to decide about downloading combofix and the other programs or not. After the issues with Malwarebytes just now, not sure what I want to do.

Yes, malwarebytes is probably over bloated and a irritating program to use. Which is why I uninstall it after I run a scan.

Spybot search and destroy is a less irritating program, that I just leave installed. And every time I want to I can update it, run the scan, see if it finds anything. That's it. Spybot is very, very quick.

And it never hurts to be thorough, that's why I run more than one sometimes. I never ran combofix myself. It's up to you.

[jraju]

It seems that you ran fix after fix, so much of third party programs, which will completely damage your system. Why try all the fixes at a time. it is very risky to try individual programs which promise, and then when you want to uninstall takes your regular system dll files as well.
                           What i now would suggest is system restore, if possible.

[Boggin]

Are you using the free or Premium version of MBAM as it's only the Prem. version that runs in the background.

MBAM shouldn't hang on a scan so it may be worth booting up into Safe Mode with Networking and running it again, although the new version is supposed to have software built into it to prevent malware disabling it, but in Safe Mode etc. there shouldn't be any conflicts.

As for your WMP etc. problems, what you have installed could be causing a conflict and running a partial clean boot to see if iTunes etc. can read/play the files could confirm that.

Go Start - type msconfig and press enter.

Click on Startup Items, note which boxes are unchecked (if any) and then click on Disable all - Apply - OK and reboot.

If that works then you will need to go back into msconfig and re-enable just one item at a time until the problem returns and then you can leave that one disabled.

If you opt to uninstall that program then you will need to enable that item in Startup first as you will end up with orphaned files.

[Shane]

I tried to run it but had some issues, didn't try blocking my antivirus program to see if it would then let me install, maybe later I will try that.

Combofix is totally automated, and if it isnt able to run then you have an infection that is killing it. I have had combofix find and clean rootkits and infections that no other scanner could find. So a lot of the newer viruses now target combofix from running because it is one of the few tools that could detect it.

Try running combofix in safe mode and see if you have can get it to run there.

Shane

[tazdavid]

Sorry I have not responded in awhile. To be honest some days are better than others for me as I suffer from Depression and Anxiety. Anyway, To update anything that happened in the last few days, I have Itunes running since I got it running a few days ago. I can agree with jraju about all the installing and uninstalling of programs that who knows what program might have caused any problems. For now I am not going to do a system restore, because I have some apps running that are for surveys and I get payed for having them installed for a limited time( one is paying $200), about a month and of course I realize these type of Apps can possibly cause problems with my PC, but I had most of them installed awhile before having these problems. I did install CCCP seperately, but in MCP I did not see those decoders in the external filters, so not sure what is going on, could be who I downloaded CCCP from. It was from the page where I got MCP. I have the free version of MalwareBytes and it didn't just hang it started eating all of my memory until my system was so slow I had to restart. I will probably give Spybot search and destroy a try and for now get rid of MalwareBytes, even though it might leave traces of it, probably like most times you uninstall a program, but if it works better than it's worth it. I did get rid of Optimizer Pro. Scarsxp, would you recommend that I reinstall CCCP from the link you gave me, maybe it will install that over what I have installed now. For now I will not bother with combofix, maybe later if I have trouble with Spybot and I feel that it's likely that combofix wouldn't install because my antivirus program was blocking it. I might have to upgrade my IE soon enough as I hear Microsoft will stop giving support to any IE before IE11 in about a year and a half. This is from a newsletter I get, I think it's ZDnet. I did just a short time ago run Msconfig( I used to use that all the time before, for this reason when I had issues, thanks Boggin for reminding me about that) and actually found some programs that I know I deleted, but had a checkbox on the item, probably orphaned files like Boggin said. I unchecked a few others that might be conflicting with MCP, Divx was one. When I restart I will see what happens, if anything different. I just checked the link for CCCP from scarsxp and that's the one I used. WHEW! Alright, I am going to try some of these things mentioned, maybe tomorrow. Thanks again everybody.

[scarsxp]

Yeah, a version of mpc comes with the CCCP pack. And I do recommend you get it from the link I pasted. I recommend anything you download that you run a antivirus scan on virustotal.com before installing. That includes before installing apps that are supposedly running for surveys to make money. They are more than likely malware, designed to intrude on your privacy. Did you actually get $200, it's probably a scam, very dangerous and risky. If you have the original .exe that installed it this application. You can take that .exe and load it on virustotal.com. And paste results here.

Did you try MalwareBytes in safe mode like Boggin recommended? And you can always disable your antivirus to run combofix. I always use different combinations of anti virus to look for malware. So I strongly recommend you try whatever it takes to get them to run. Also minimize your background programs when you run these programs. Close anything down, web browser, practically everything you don't need. I would kind of like to see a screenshot of all the processes you are running. Bring up task manager, and click "Show all process from users". And press the print screen button. Paste in paint, save it as png. And attach it here.

 I wouldn't say that anti virus programs when uninstalled leave traces. Maybe Shane can correct me if I'm wrong. But they are suppose to uninstall all traces it and even from the registry. If they anti virus is a reputable software, they won't do that. I heard horror stories about McAfee not uninstalling, although.

By the way, I didn't catch what antivirus you are using for your main protection?
Do you use a firewall, by the way?

[Boggin]

I use IOBit Uninstaller which has a deep scan and file shredder option after using Windows standard uninstall which normally gets rid of programs without leaving any residue, but avoid accepting any unwanted bundled software such as Advanced System Care or you could end up with even greater problems if that gets at your registry.

http://www.iobit.com/advanceduninstaller.html

I don't normally advise using a registry cleaner but the free version of CCleaner is an intelligent one and doesn't indiscriminately remove items it shouldn't, but uncheck the ActiveX option before running it and that should get rid of any uninstalled program residue http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

If you recheck those orphaned msconfig items then using Tools/Start up in CCleaner, you can remove those items.