Really Really Bizarre Temporary Failure

I used to go to forums like this but stopped after I became sort of an expert on the Windows XP system (and on getting all software to work right). But something happened to my computer today that is so bizarre that I thought it necessary to see if anyone has ever heard of this at a tech forum.

I’ll give you the sequence of events:

1. Overnight I ran the Microsoft Windows Live One Care Safety Scanner (which is a free online scan). One interesting thing about this particular scan is that it is technically the most wide ranging scanner you can run with one click. You can have it scan for malware, registry junk and errors, open ports, whether any of your discs need defragment, and probably other stuff I can’t think of at the moment. You can do all this with just one click. The address is: Microsoft Windows LiveOneCare Safety Scanner
So I ran this overnight.

2. When I woke up the results of the scan in summary were that it recommended removal of some registry junk and it recommended a defragment.

3. After checking the results I noticed something that never ever happened before (in over 25,000 hours of computer experience I have). The files in my portable hard drive (which I use as my main data drive and I also have another portable hard drive for back-up) were not showing (and not accessible). On mouseover the drive was still showing the correct gigabytes, but the files themselves were seemingly missing. So as anyone with any experience would do I restarted the computer.

4. The computer would not restart correctly. It booted down normally but then got stuck on the very first screen you always see when you turn the computer on. I call it the “HP Screen”; it’s a blue background screen with the HP icon on it. Normally after about three seconds at this screen you go next to the boot up series of screens. There are three f-key choices at the bottom of the blue screen including boot menu and system restore (but like anyone else I almost never use these). So to emphasize, what happened was that nothing happened: the computer was stuck on the HP screen.

5. I tried four times to generate the boot-up by cutting the power but each time I was stuck on the HP screen indefinitely. I tried each of the three menu items that are at the bottom of the HP screen and none of them worked. Although there were no noises you usually get if a hard drive has failed, I thought sure this was a hard drive failure situation.

6. I went out to start shoveling the bottom of my driveway so that I could go to Walmart and buy a new computer using the phone in the Walmart lobby (or possibly buy one from Walmart itself).

7. I came back in and what I think is some kind of bios screen had appeared. I think one of the menu items on the HP screen had worked after more than an hour! On the bios screen I clicked on the selection for booting up using the usual boot up drive (the one I thought was dead).

8. The computer then did boot up normally! On that first boot up the portable drive (still attached as usual) was not recognized at all, but everything else was working, so already it was clear that the main computer hard drive was working normally. I started to think that the portable hard drive had failed even though it is relatively new.

9. I unplugged the portable, restarted the computer, and plugged in the portable after the main computer booted up in order to start it “hot” thinking this would determine once and for all whether it was the portable that had failed (or whether the USB hub had failed or whether the operating system had failed and would no longer recognize any USB device).

10. But amazingly, everything returned to normal as if nothing totally bizarre had happened! I tested all “critical things” and also have restarted twice and every last thing is completely and totally back to normal!

I talked with a tech at a computer store I go to and much to my amazement he agreed with a theory I threw out: that somehow the Windows Live One Care Safety Scanner temporarily damaged (or changed critical settings if you prefer) on the XP Operating System. (I learned a long time ago that there is really no such thing as a too crazy theory when it comes to computers). Keep in mind though that I never voluntarily had the scanner remove or change anything; I exited the app without having it remove or change anything. So if the scanner caused this it would have to have been in the process of scanning itself and not in any post scan process you authorize it to do. Again, I didn't authorize anything other than the scan itself.

This is sooo bizarre (one of the top three all time bizarre failures in over 25,000 hours of heavy computer use) that I thought I would run this by a forum or two and see what the opinions are on this theory that an online scanner caused a temporary (about 90 minutes to be exact) total operating system failure (in particular, a total loss of boot-up capability).

An alternate theory is that it was a temporary hard drive failure. Another alternate theory (by the tech I spoke with) is that it was a temporary memory chip failure. In general the technician I spoke with thought that it could be a temporary failure of any number of hardware components. But much to my amazement he also agreed with me that it is possible that the online scanner caused the 90 minute total failure of the operating system.

I myself am thinking the scanner actually caused this (and of course I will never run that particular scan again). But on the other hand if anything resembling this happens in the near future it would have to be a hardware that signaled failure here but didn’t completely fail for good.

How am I doing here? Does the scanner theory make any sense or not? Is there such a thing as temporary major hard drive failure followed by total recovery back to normal of that hard drive? What is your opinion as to what probably happened? Is there something else that could be to blame that I have not even thrown out? Thanks for any comments and happy holidays.

All-in-one tune-up scanners have been as popular as snake oil for many years. and have produced as many various good/bad/indifferent results as the millions of times they have been used. The sequence goes something like the following: 1. An owner/operator has a machine that is either running in top form or has been demonstrating various glitches that the owner/operator wishes to correct. 2. The owner/operator runs a scan 3. The scan is somewhat like a "black box" since there is little information about what the scanner is doing/changing and no information about the criterion the black box uses to detect problems that it may decide to change or not. 4. After the scan has been performed, the owner/operator's machine performs or not, good/bad/indifferent 5. The owner/operator and associates gather around to speculate upon theories of what might have happened inside of that black box operation. _________________ Theories are wonderful tools proposed to help describe what just happened. Like opinions, everyone can have a theory or theories. In order to get close to verifying a theory, it must be tested against actual known conditions when actual known operations are applied. Black Box utilities provide various levels of actual information, but usually very little that can be "examined and tested". __________________________________ We don't know anything about your machine's hardware, software or operating system configuration, nor the relative health of any of those features. The black box didn't know anything about those features either. Then the black box gathered information presumed to be important and useful. Then the black box either did or didn't perform any corrections, and either did or didn't allow for owner/operator choice points. Then some result occurred. _____________________________ The black box is not the only "unknown" factor. In most cases, well written black box utilities perform relatively benign operations and produce safe results. One other "unknown" is the relative state of Hardware, Software, OS, applications software, and configuration of the machine. It is unrealistic to assume that even a well written black box will be able to take into account all of the millions of possible conditions and combinations. ______________________________ Yes, RAM memory problems can cause mysterious and intermittent phenomenon. Yes, HD physical function, file structure, sector faults, heat and voltage changes can produce mysterious and intermittent phenomenon. Or The relatively well written MS PC Safety Scan got tangled up with a machine hardware/OS/software configuration that it could not handle appropriately and "hung". "Hung" may mean that it occupied all available memory and did not release memory space after completion (or couldn't complete) After a few reboots, the memory space was eventually released and ordinary function resumed with your machine. Bottom line: You do not now know if your machine if performing better, worse, or the same, nor are you any closer to knowing the level of health of the various features mentioned above. And of course, you don't have much information about what just happened. _______________________________ I don't generally recommend black box type optimize or repair tools.

It might be worth taking a look into the Event Viewer to see if it gives any clues as to what has been going on Start Run type in the white box eventvwr Click on Ok When the Event Viewer opens you will need to look into each of the 4 areas…… look first for the Errors (Reds then the Yellows)…..try and see if any of the errors are date stamped with the time that the problem happened with your machine…. if you had not recovered successfully from the failed boot etc then you would have blessed the day you made a complete disc image using software like Paragon, Ghost, Acronis or similar (or one of the many free disc imaging applications easilyfreely downloadable. With a good, verified disc image, kept safe on removable media (and an extra copy kept offsite) and a bootable CD able to mount the USB external drive (or wherever you keep them) you will have a pretty robust recovery "fall back position"…and if you have also made incremental mini disc images then you could be up and running again 100% in less time than it takes to walk the dog! Thanks for posting your experiences..they sure are curious….. Regards paws

[attachment removed] The Problem with PC Theory Is the Problem with PC Practice. Applications of theory to practice often are unsatisfactory because they confront (or fail to confront) the pitfalls which such applications have succumbed to: (1) many so-called "applications" of theory are not concrete and therefore not applications at all. (2) extended, even exhaustive expositions of theories frequently result in few if any concrete applications. Cheers, Lee

All-in-one tune-up scanners have been as popular as snake oil for many years. and have produced as many various good/bad/indifferent results as the millions of times they have been used.

The sequence goes something like the following:

1. An owner/operator has a machine that is either running in top form or has been demonstrating various glitches that the owner/operator wishes to correct.

2. The owner/operator runs a scan

3. The scan is somewhat like a "black box" since there is little information about what the scanner is doing/changing and no information about the criterion the black box uses to detect problems that it may decide to change or not.

4. After the scan has been performed, the owner/operator's machine performs or not, good/bad/indifferent

5. The owner/operator and associates gather around to speculate upon theories of what might have happened inside of that black box operation.
_________________

Theories are wonderful tools proposed to help describe what just happened.
Like opinions, everyone can have a theory or theories.

In order to get close to verifying a theory, it must be tested against actual known conditions when actual known operations are applied.

Black Box utilities provide various levels of actual information, but usually very little that can be "examined and tested".
__________________________________

We don't know anything about your machine's hardware, software or operating system configuration, nor the relative health of any of those features.
The black box didn't know anything about those features either.
Then the black box gathered information presumed to be important and useful.
Then the black box either did or didn't perform any corrections, and either did or didn't allow for owner/operator choice points.
Then some result occurred.
_____________________________

The black box is not the only "unknown" factor.
In most cases, well written black box utilities perform relatively benign operations and produce safe results.

One other "unknown" is the relative state of Hardware, Software, OS, applications software, and configuration of the machine.
It is unrealistic to assume that even a well written black box will be able to take into account all of the millions of possible conditions and combinations.

______________________________

Yes, RAM memory problems can cause mysterious and intermittent phenomenon.
Yes, HD physical function, file structure, sector faults, heat and voltage changes can produce mysterious and intermittent phenomenon.

Or

The relatively well written MS PC Safety Scan got tangled up with a machine hardware/OS/software configuration that it could not handle appropriately and "hung".
"Hung" may mean that it occupied all available memory and did not release memory space after completion (or couldn't complete)
After a few reboots, the memory space was eventually released and ordinary function resumed with your machine.

Bottom line: You do not now know if your machine if performing better, worse, or the same, nor are you any closer to knowing the level of health of the various features mentioned above.
And of course, you don't have much information about what just happened.
_______________________________

I don't generally recommend black box type optimize or repair tools.

Doug summed that one up in a nut shell.

I seen weird before and never trusted a all in one program that claim to be a 1 stop fix for all, IMO thats asking to hit you over the head with a hammer and saying trust me it will not hurt.

Guess you can call that a fluke or one time thing who knows what. But if I were you I would create me a newer restore point just in case and back up all that you can in case this comes back and bites you.

Jimbo1

Doug: Very great reply and I basically agree with what you said both specifically and in your overall outlook (and I am a guy who always wants to have an overall outlook!). My best hunches are that my hardware is still good; certainly there have been no hints of any hardware failure before or since this incident, but it's also true that my hardware has roughly 13,000 hours of actual computer usage on it which is getting up there. I’m going to run a hardware checking app I have and I’ll check device manager and also I’ll check the event viewer (excellent suggestion, paws) Paws, your event viewer and especially your recovery disc advice is massively appreciated. I have a “recovery partition” from HP but that is useless if you can’t boot up! So I need to have a recovery disc; getting one is the next level I have to reach. Lee: yes, in other words, especially with computers but in other areas to one extent or another, you can spend too much time with theories and not enough time and effort applying them. In other words, if you are afraid you don’t know the right thing to do, you can “hide behind” your theories for too long, until it is too late! Jimbo: “IMO thats asking to hit you over the head with a hammer and saying trust me it will not hurt. Yes, as explained below I think I went too far singing the praises of anti-malware scanners. Ironically, the Microsoft Safety Scanner page is especially “seductive”; it seems to promise all your problems will be over forever if you use it, oh, say, once a week. About an hour ago I was thinking further, Sherlock Holmes style, and I think now that the smoking gun that the online Microsoft “Safety Scan” did in fact render the computer unbootable for about 90 minutes was the fact that the files of the portable hard drive became inaccessible sometime during the scan. But it is considered all but certain that the portable drive hardware never failed. If the scan could while running cause the op sys to no longer recognize the files on the portable some time during the scan (which is a very, very serious failure in op sys terms and in real life terms) then logically it could cause other serious failures such as loss of boot up capability. This incident is actually part of a long saga. A very large irony here is that when I first started using computers (after avoiding them for many years) I quickly adopted the theory that you could sometimes end up worse off rather than better off after using anti-virus programs (including the scanners of them). In other words, my theory was that you would eventually get burned if you were too aggressive using anti-virus apps. I am very opinionated and had plenty of amateur and speculative reasoning to back up my theory that anti-virus apps should be used with extreme caution. I mean, I didn’t know for sure that my theory was correct but I persisted in the next few years testing out that theory come hell or high water (and I ended up with both hell and high water). Aside from limiting myself to one single anti-virus scanner, I could hardly figure out how to properly and aggressively use the one I had since although I am very intelligent, back then I was essentially incompetent as far as getting software to do what you really want it to do. And the A-V program seemed when I was brand new to computers impossible to master. So although I had a resident anti-virus (with no supplemental apps to go with it like I have now), I didn’t use it properly (I probably didn’t even have the guard activated all the time, laugh out loud). So as you would expect, gradually my computer was overwhelmed with malware. My method of getting rid of malware was this system restore app (not the Windows one but this other one that came with my computer). For a little over two years my approach worked to keep the damage from the malware in check, but it did not ever completely remove the malware (and more kept coming) and in the long run the malware won that war and the computer became unbootable. That was three years ago, but I have still not to this day attempted to use that computer again by doing a total reinstall to this day (finally next year I do this). Anyway, the moral of the story is that I was extremely pessimistic and cynical (and rather incompetent) about anti-virus programs and scanners and ended up going down with my ship because of that. Now a few years later I think I have finally gone too far in the opposite extreme. In the last two years I have finally achieved relative command and control over the operating system including protecting it from malware most of the time and including being able to remove malware if necessary. But very recently, at the end of November, I was hammered with the all time most massive malware attack. I joked with my brother that it was like a malware Service Pack had been installed on my machine. There were hundreds of malevolent cookies, several dozen Trojans, several root kits, several malware (fraudulent) programs, and yet another dozen or two types of malware where I don't even know what the type of malware was involved with those. I kid you not and I do not exaggerate; my computer was saturated with malware and for the vast majority of people a full reinstall would be necessary. But (like I usually do) I had different ideas. Although ready to get the white flag out for a recovery (using HPs’ “recovery partition, drive D physically on the main drive) I shut down all normal operations and went on the counterattack. I primarily used the excellent Malwarebytes scanner to get rid of the great majority of the malware. The Malwarebytes scanner alone removed almost 1,000 malware items (roughly 95% of them some kind of malware-associated cookies that I highly doubt you can remove with any XP tools). Over the next few days, I ran several dozen more scans including rootkit scanners which for all I know didn't hardly exist five years ago when I started, at least not free ones anyway. Three, four, possibly five rootkits were removed by three or four different scanners! In total, after running roughly 30 scans using about a dozen different scanners over about 10 days, I am reasonably sure that literally every last malware was removed! This obviously was the all time success story for me for removing malware. Fresh off that incredible victory, and finally having been convinced that anti-malware apps can work very effectively and safely, I decided to abandon my traditional caution about using anti-virus scans and I decided to load up with every free downloadable scanner and to bookmark every free online malware scan I could find. And I decided to run a different scan every single night, which I have been doing for almost three weeks (with no malware showing up). But now today this crazy thing happens and the odds are high that it was due to the malware scanner, ironically the Microsoft one! The Microsoft scanner attacked and damaged the Microsoft operating system! Now I have to a limited extent anyway gone around a big circle and arrived back to that old theory (or hunch) I had way back in the old days, that anti-virus (anti-malware) programs will sometimes do more harm than good. Clearly what seems to be called here is some kind of careful balance between being afraid to use the scanners and overusing them. Here's the current bottom line (my “state of the art” knowledge and position): Despite the fact no scanner is risk free, you have no choice but to load up with the free scanners to supplement your resident anti-virus, because you will need multiple scanners if you have a big attack launched against you, but once you are convinced your machine is clean (after, say, three clean scans by three different scanners on free straight nights) you should probably scan no more than once every 10 days or so instead of daily, due to the outside chance that you could do more harm than good. Scanning nightly is apparently excessive and somewhat dangerous. Also, there are going to be some scans that give off hints that they could cause more trouble than they are worth. For example, any time a scanner hangs up or fails to update easily, things such as this, you should probably suspend using that one and use only the ones that never give you any significant trouble. So this is another one of those “I would have told you that you were crazy moments”. If someone had told me yesterday that running the Microsoft Safety Scan could actually render the Op Sys inoperable (for 90 minutes anyway, and who knows how close I came to a permanently unbootable computer?) I would have told them they were stark raving crazy. Now today I would tell them they were extremely up on their tech knowledge because that is apparently exactly what happened. Agreements, disagreements, comments, all are very welcome… Also, thanks and happy holidays.

AntiMalware and Optimize utilities are very different.

Read here, for guidelines to secure your machine: http://forums.whatthetech.com/index.php?showtopic=98700
________________

As for "Optimize" type utilities…. generally - Don't.
________________

The fact is that most windows problems and most windows maintenance can be handled by Windows native utilities already installed and available as part of the operating system.
Use them.

Best Regards

Read that whole page and took some bookmarks (had most of them already) and downloaded the registry backup program, thanks very much, brother.

Yes that's very true regarding "optimizers" and I never ever use optimizer utilities, which generally will do more harm than good. And by the way, when I say I "load up" on scanners, I only get the trusted and big name ones; I would never touch with a ten foot pole one advertised in a Google ad, nor any other obscure one.

My theory here (my creative mind comes up with too many of them) was that you would be able to get away with Microsoft itself scanning and to some extent optimizing your system under the theory that the Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner would not damage anything regardless of which component of it you used because the same company that made the scanner made the operating system itself. Microsoft wouldn't damage their own op sys, would they? Oh yes, they would! So that little theory of mine was apparently wrong and who knows how close I came to a permanently unbootable machine.

There are actually three components to that scanner which you can combine or run separately: protection, cleanup, and tune-up. The cleanup is apparently actually a registry cleaner (nothing but the registry is "cleaned up"). Registry cleaners are generally very dangerous to use and I never ever use them (except I made an exception once with the CCleaner registry clean tool. I trust CCleaner to a large degree (and I thought I could trust Microsoft not to damage their own operating system, laugh out loud.) CCleaner is mostly used as an extremely convenient way to remove temporary internet and other temporary and unneeded program files.

The tune-up component of the Microsoft Safety Scanner is apparently just an evaluation regarding defragment (which you could get right from XP).

Lastly, the protection component is a little more than the usual anti-malware focus. The documentation on the protection scan is conflicting with the options you have when you run the tool. The information on the protection scanner is:

The protection scanner checks your computer for and helps remove viruses, spyware, and other malicious software (also called malware). It also checks your computer for common open ports that might make your PC more vulnerable to online threats and hackers. It will automatically attempt to clean any infected files it finds on your computer, make recommendations for any it couldn’t clean, and identify any open ports.

When the scan is done, you’ll see a report detailing the number of files scanned, the number of infected files found (if any), the type of infection and virus name (if any), whether or not the scanner removed or cleaned the infected files (if any), and the number of common open ports.

This obviously implies that you can't stop it from removing things it identifies. But I swear that when I ran it I was able to set it to not automatically remove any supposed malware, to let me decide at the end. In any event, nothing was identified or removed. And no ports were found to be open.

Here is something very, very interesting written on another forum (I posted this inquiry here and on one other forum):

The scanner could have indeed caused your trouble. Microsoft and a lot of other software companies have a habit of taking liberties with computers without disclosing everything they do, and this is one of the many reasons why I dislike them thinking they can do that.

Since it recommended a defrag, it's quite possible that it unmounted the drives (without permission, of course), and your computer wasn't able to mount the system drive upon reboot (remember, reboot does NOT equal shutdown/power on). Having the computer off for awhile could have allowed the drives to reset somehow, though I can't figure out exactly what process could have happened there.

I honestly think this guy just nailed down exactly what happened. Both drives were "unmounted" during this "defrag check" and they were not remounted as I assume they were supposed to be. Then somehow the boot drive was remounted by Windows XP after roughly 90 minutes.

If the defrag check indeed caused this then in my previous post I started to shift too far back in the direction of not having confidence in malware scanners. Maybe it' is safe to run anti-malware scanners almost every night as long as all they are is anti-malware scanners, exclusively. But generally stay away from every other type of scanner except in rare cases where you absolutely know for sure you want some other type of scan and you are prepared for bad things that might happen.

Happy holidays (have to say it every time).

So to make sure anyone reading this in the future understands the most important practical conclusion of this: DO NOT use the tune-up component of the Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner unless you want to risk ending up with an unbootable computer. If you want a defrag check use the defrag that is on the Op Sys itself. In XP, Control Panel > Performance & Maintenance > Rearrange items on your hard disk to make programs run faster > analyze > then defrag if it seems very necessary. The exact risk if you use the clean-up component is beyond my knowledge level, but using it is most likely at least slightly risky. The protection component of the Live OneCare Safety Scanner is probably as safe as any other malware scanner and, in general, malware scanners do seem to be safe and sometimes quite effective (thank goodness). But there are some scanners that can only be used safely if you are being carefully supervised by an expert, such as ComboFix. (I myself am deathly afraid of ComboFix and ones like that; I stick to the less complicated, less risky, and more popular ones). As for me, this incident actually makes me even more wary of defragment than I was already (I lack confidence in a lot of stuff) and now I have a good excuse to be lazy and irresponsible and defrag only once a year or something. But having said that, even I did a defrag about six months ago with no trouble. You know the drill, happy holidays.

tremaine, Please don't take this as mean spirited because that is not my intent. I'm just saying this as one highly opinionated loud mouth to another. The anecdotal evidence that you have provided reinforces my first thought when I read your original topic… I'm betting you had a rootkit in there that the scanner couldn't deal with. There are several out there that would do exactly what you described. When hit with one of them, automatic scanner will almost never save you. You need someone to look for something specific and deal with it individually. I know what you mean about your suspicion about AV scanners. Up to a couple years ago, I never ran any. Period. No AV. No anti-spyware. Not even a firewall. The fact is I never even updated windows! I thought all of those things would just bloat my system and make it slower. And for me… it worked. I've never been infected and I take care of 13 computers. A couple of Christmases ago, my mother let her grandkids play on her computer and they were playing some online games. Bingo.. she got infected. I found this site when I was seeking help to deal with it. I liked it here and stayed. . I went through the training in the classroom and became a malware fighter. To date… I've still never been infected, but every computer I touch has anti-virus kept up to date, firewall on, current with all updates, etc. Through my experiences here… I can assure you that nobody knows everything there is to know about malware. I suspect we have many helpers here who could impress Bill Gates with their knowledge… but they still run into infections that they are at a loss to handle. Luckily the malware removal community is in reality a community and we help each other and everybody knows something. Another fact of life is that no scanner, program, or army of the same can protect a system against what the user does with it. If you find that you often get infected… it is not the fault of your programs. It's you. I suggest that you stop looking for a better scanner, and start seeking to determine what it is that you are doing with your computer that gets you infected. The problem behavior could be quite simple… using P2P programs, clicking on things that you don't know what are, opening emails that you should be suspicious of, etc. It doesn't have to be something drastic like downloading porn - it is usually the little things when you let your guard down. And while I'm up on my soapbox (that I always carry with me) throwing every scanner/program/cleaning tool known to man at the problem is a very iffy scenario. Scanners can't think. Sure, sometimes you'll get lucky and hit the right combination that will remove the problem, but more often they will only remove a symptom or two. The infection is still there and will eventually rear it's ugly head. Possibly getting buried deeper into the system. Even though using a system restore when you have a problem often works (sort of) - many infections exist long before they become symptomatic. You may restore to a point prior to the worst of the symptoms, but not prior to the infection becoming resident, which just means that you've stalled off the inevitable for some period of time. My never-to-be-humble advice is…. pick one AV scanner. Use it. If it repeatedly finds malware… then get to a site such as here at WTT and post a log in the malware removal forum. It's just like medicine and your body… the sooner it's treated, the more likely there is to be a happy ending to the story. And just as there is no stigma attached to going to your doctor and getting a physical, there is no shame in asking for another set of eyes to have a look at what is happening with your computer.

Like the next man I love a good theory, but as for a Microsoft product not damaging anything? After installing Netframework 4 on W7 recently, I lost the use of Opera and Open Office. I had to do a repair install on both. Not being Microsoft products may have had something to do with it (?). Cheers, Lee

That Microsoft Safety Scanner under discussion may or not may not have the capability of dealing with serious root kits; some general malware scanners do but it seems that the majority do not. I set the Microsoft Scanner to just scan and identify (and nothing was identified or removed) so the "protection scan" component definitely should not have caused today's incident. Apparently the tune-up scan was the culprit. (You can run the protection scan without running the tune-up scan although I will be too afraid to do so for about a year, laugh out loud.) I know for a fact that I had between three and five root kits on this machine (and all kinds of other garbage) about three weeks ago and I know for a fact that every one of them were completely and totally removed by a combination of multi-purpose malware scanners and dedicated rootkit scanners. After this spectacular success, I am never again going to be as pessimistic and cynical about malware scanners as I used to be. The Malwarebytes one is my number one by the way. As for specialized rootkit scanners, here are the root kit scanners/removers I have compiled and have at my disposal: Avira Anti-RootKit Tool Gmer Rootkit & Malware Root Repeal Trend Micro Rootkit Buster Kaspersky Root Kit [TDSS] Killer The Gmer has a lot of other tools that come with it. I had the TDSS thing and the Kaspersky nailed it instantly. That is the only Rootkit that the Kaspersky scanner listed above removes, but if you have that rootkit you don't care about how limited that tool is, laugh out loud. Please note that you should generally NOT run these rootkit scanners unless you have evidence that you actually have a rootkit, because on some of the documentation to the above it states that running root kit scans is substantially riskier than running plain old anti-malware scans which, fortunateley, are generally very low risk. Maybe a few years ago if you got a bad rootkit you either had to get expert assistance or do a total reinstall but I am living proof that these days it is possible for a very experienced user (but not a malware removal expert) to get rid of them using various downloadable scanners. It is NOT a walk in the park; you have to be ready to put in several dozen hours organizing what you are doing and on finding, downloading, updating, and using the scanners. (I always use Excel to manage everything including malware removal). If you have suffered a major attack you could easily be looking at a few dozen hours of scanning and removal work. (It might actually be in some cases somewhat faster to get help at a forum but I myself like to handle my own fiascos if at all possible). Also, you commonly have to know certain tricks or the malware might be able to stop you from being able to use your scanners (renaming files, safe mode, etc.). Somehow (don't ask me how) I have learned a lot of those tricks needed to outfox malware that is trying to stop me from removing it. Happy holidays.

Like the next man I love a good theory, but as for a Microsoft product not damaging anything?
After installing Netframework 4 on W7 recently, I lost the use of Opera and Open Office. I had to do a repair install on both. Not being Microsoft products may have had something to do with it (?).

Cheers,
Lee

Yes, if they damage their own op sys with their own scanner than we must assume unlimited potential for Microsoft to devastate non-Microsoft software.

Happy holidays.

The problem with a lot of rootkit finding software is that they do not identify whether what they find is of malicious or benign intent. Often what they find are just hidden files or processes. Wiping all 'identified' rootkits 'found' is not an advisable option for obvious reasons. There are both good and bad rootkits, although any use of such a clocking device (which is what a rootkit is) by any software program is a questionable practice, as it can potentially be taken advantage of by malicious software writers. Kaspersky and Norton's both use rootkits in their security software apparently. Cheers, Lee