14 replies to this topic

[EdithBunker]

Okay, I just got cable modem today. I had spyware guard, Norton antivirus, Adaware and Spybot, but no firewall. (I'd had it before, but never knew what to answer when some program was asking permission to access the web, would allow it, but had no idea if some "bad" program was being used right under my nose with my permission!!) Anyway, I just downloaded ZA's free version and after the restart, it wouldn't let me get online! A buncha pop ups came up asking permission to use the web--one being microsoft internet connection sharing--(I don't know what that is, never had seen it before a friend of ours "rebuilt" my 'puter) I gave microsoft internet connection sharing permission and now I am online-- guess that was the right choice-haha but who am I sharing my connection with??? So how am I supposed to know when to give permission? some of these just come up a bunch of numbers, not a name of a program asking if it can use my computer. I won't be back to see if anybody answered me for a few hours, but I hope somebody can help me! (Just call me Edith! heehee! (OOPS, one more question-- am I supposed to shut off my cable modem box every time? dose leaving it on make my computer vulnerable?) Thanks!

['KotaGuy]

Hi Edith!

MS Internet Connection Sharing or ICS is mainly used for sharing a single internet connection with multiple computers on a network. What the service does is act like a gateway to the internet for other computers inside your network to connect through.

If you only have the one computer... you shouldn't need ICS turned on, for any reason... it shouldn't have to be turned on for you to access the internet. I'm kind of perplexed as to why you needed to allow that service acccess through ZoneAlarm before it let you on the net.

Which version of Windows are you using and what updates/Service Packs have been installed. If you are using WinXP with SP2 installed, is it possible you have both the Windows firewall and ZoneAlarm active at the same time? I could see this causing conflicts if it is the case. If it is... turn off the Windows firewall... ZoneAlarm is a more robust solution.

Now, the programs asking for access... hard to say whether they are good or bad with having a better description of them. The ones that are just a bunch of numbers don't sound right to me and could possibly be an infection. You may want to download HijackThis and post a log to the HijackThis Logs forum. If you do post a log, make sure you put HiJackThis in its own folder so that it can create the backups it needs to. Also make sure you post the complete log, unedited, header info and all.

As for powering down your cable modem... dont worry about it. Shouldn't have to turn it off. If you're going to power something down, just turn your computer off. If you don't feel like turning it off and you want to shut off access to/from the net while you are away from your system, you can lock it down with ZoneAlarm. Right click on the ZoneAlarm icon in your system tray(bottom right of the screen) and choose "Stop all internet activity". You can enable it by right clicking on the icon again and choosing "Resume internet activity" or something of the sort.

[EdithBunker]

Hi KotaGuy, and thanks for your response. I am running ME, and haven't installed the update that keeps popping up because every time I have tried to download it, it freezes up the computer and never finishes the job, I'd like it to go away if it isn't going to give me the upgrade! I had wondered why my friend had installed that ICS when he did, since I told him I didn't want the kids' computer online, but I did want them linked, since I homeschool and would like to access their assignments and grade tehm from my "teacher's desk". That connection worked a few days and stopped--I'm not sure what I may have done to cause that. (Imagine Edith Bunker on a puter, ya know? ) We got the friend to come over and rehook it up and it didn't work the next day! (He is an IT guy at his company, but very often what he says hasn't agreed with the general concensus here--eg he says I didn't need both Adaware and spybot and that spyware guard wasn't necessary--and he has installed different things before that slow down my system) I s'pose I will need the ICS now, though, cuz only my computer has the modem and my hubby plans to get a wireless router so he can have fast cable access too. One thing that has had me concerned has been that for about a month now, every time I shut down my 'puter, the grey box comes up saying some program is still running and I have to hit "end task" to be able to shut down my computer. Sometimes it doesn't go away and I have to either do control-alt-delete, and even at times that freezes up and I have to hold the start botton in to shut down. I have run NAV, Both spyware programs, scandisk, disk defrag--cleared cookies, anything I can think of--it goes away for the next usage and then is back. I will run HJT and post over in that forum in awhile, I an running a scan right now, so it will be a few minutes BTW, I don't know why my HJT is in my zip files, I downloaded it one other time, and tried to give it it's own folder, and somehow it ended up zipped. Do I need to move it? Can you tell me how? Thanks!

['KotaGuy]

Hi Edith. Took a look at your log you posted... you did everything ok. I don't, however, see anything bad in it though. Which is good! So whatever is asking for access is most likely not a virus. If you are still concerned about the programs, next time they ask for access, pay attention to what is in the popup, write it down maybe. If you want you post it and I'll see if I can find any info on it for you. Don't think you have much to worry about though. About the shut down issue... this can happen at times. Before windows shuts down, it terminates all active processes. Once that is done, Windows itself shuts down. At times, a process might be unresponsive when shutting down and that pop up will appear. Most of the time when you click End Task, it should end it, but as you've found out, it does not always happen that way. WinME is kind of wonky that way. I'll need the name of the process to let you know if it is good or bad. As I said though, from your log, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

[EdithBunker]

Thanks again, KotaGuy, Helpful Information about the shutdown thingy, I'll not worry about it, then. I also appreciate your looking at my HJT log-- good to know there's nothing wrong. When my friend rebuilt this computer, he tried to install XP but my puter wasn't able to take it, so he had to take it back and I thought he would reinstall '98, but he did the ME--explaining it was at least an upgrade from before. Maybe it's my airheadedness, but I liked 98 better-- ME seems to be more quirky. One last possible problem. Scandisk won't run right. I'd had to do one of those shutdowns where I had to hold the on/off button on the 'puter due to a freeze-up even with ctrl-alt-delete, and when I started it back up, scandisk automatically runs. Only this time, it ran and ran and never got past maybe 1/5th of the bar that shows it's progress. It restarted a whole lot. After about 1/2 hour, I just hit cancel, and did stuff on the puter. Everything was wacky, so I shutdown and restarted and tried to re-run scandisk--same problem. This time I let it sit for about 45 min. When i came back same lack of progress. I unplugged it overnight and this morning restarted, skipped the scandisk and ran NAV. No viruses, but I don't know if some problem is compounding itself while I have the computer on, and some disk has errors on it that scan disk sould have fixed? I didn't even try to run disk defrag--I don't know enough about what either of these do--only that I am supposed to run them every so often. Sorry fer bein' such an airhead!!

['KotaGuy]

Heh... WinME wasn't much of an upgrade. I always found it worked ok for a few months then it started going flaky. Reinstall it, few months later same thing would happen. Win98 was much more stable. If you know how to install Win98... you may want to do that and get rid of WinME.

As for the Scandisk restarting issue.... This behavior is usually caused by background programs that are frequently accessing the hard drive while Scandisk or Defrag are running. Antivirus software is one common culprit, but there are many others.

Might want to try a different utility than the one built into WinME. If you have Norton SystemWorks, try the Disk repair/Defragger utility in it. If not, you might want to try ScanDefrag. You can download it from here or here.

Let me know how things go!

Edited by 'KotaGuy, 17 April 2005 - 11:02 AM.

[EdithBunker]

KotaGuy, Hmmmm, I think I have a problem. . . (No, Edith, yer 'puter has a problem--it's operator! heehee!) Scandisk won't go beyond the initial about 1/5th of the status bar, disk defrag won't run at all, even after downloading the scandefrag program. I did shut down everything (Except systray and explorer) with the ctrl-alt-del before I tried to run them. I've tried them several times. Whatever is wrong is just going to compound itself, isn't it? I would be able to follow instructions as to how to reinstall winows98, but I don't have the disk for it, the freind who installed the ME does. (Groannn I'm gonna loose my computer for about two weeks again!) Ya get what you pay for help, huh? (In this case, free, from a friend with an ego the size of Texas! ) If I wait to get help, is this problem on my 'puter going to get serious? Is it even possible for me to buy a win98 disk to try to reinstall it myself? To do that, I will loose everything I have stored on my computer, right? (I homeschool and have downloaded a lot of teacher resources) The reason I'm asking about waiting is that I just moved and haven't found a lot of things-- including blank disks to try to save some of that stuff before I do anything (or have it done). If we decided to take the computer to someone we'd pay to fix it, can you point me in a direction as to who to look up in the phone book? (My hubby is talking about taking it back to Best Buy where we bought it 7 yrs ago--I'm not too excited about that idea! LOL!)

['KotaGuy]

Ok... lets try this. Reboot your computer into Safe Mode. Hold down the CTRL key while it is restarting. This should bring up Startup Menu. Choose Safe Mode. Try running scandisk from Safe Mode, be sure to do a thorough check, as it may be possible you have some bad sectors on the disc that will need to be repaired or marked as bad by Windows. Let me know how it goes. I don't think a reinstall is needed... yet

[EdithBunker]

Sorry it took me awhile to get back, KotaGuy! That was good advice! The scan took several hours! I scanned both C: and D: drive--both had a gazillion errors on 'em (A 'puter CAN count to a gazillion can't it? ) I went ahead and did the disk defrag afterward, since it wouldn't run before, too. That took most of today. I can't tell if the computer is running any smoother or not, but restarting in "normal" mode actually took longer after running these scans--dunno if that is of any concern or not. I still want to go back to Win 98, but I'll probably wait til I finish this school year--I can't live without my 'puter for two weeks again! (Plus i still have to act like it's a reinstall, and save all my downloaded teacher tools--or do I? I appreciate all your help--glad you smart guys are around to help airheads like me when we break our 'puters!!

[EdithBunker]

Oh, another question-- do I really need all the stuff that is running on my computer? there are about 15 things running at any one time, and sometimes My system resouces are at 51% akkkk!

['KotaGuy]

Hiya! Not sure if I like the sound of how many errors were on your hard drive. Was windows able to repair them all? And if/when you go back to Win98, you will need to back up your data. With the amount of errors that were found by scandisk, you might wanna start doing that frequently just in case something real bad happens... like the hard drive deciding its going to die on you or something I'm not saying hit the panic button or anything... just that hard drives can be... weird sometimes. About your processes, there may be some that are active that you can disable to free up some resources. But without knowing how much RAM you got in your system, hard to say whether or not its normal or excessive.

[EdithBunker]

When the scandisk was finished, the pop up window listed where the errors were, and that it had fixed them all. I didn't understand the listings of errors, but the numbers were high. I'll start doing the back up disks--starting today. When the friend worked on it last summer, he put in more RAM (384.0MB) (Of which 25% is free as I type! ) and a larger hard drive, I think 80GB. I think he also replaced the motherboard, but not a brand new one. He tried to put in WIN XP but my computer wouldn't start up-- I think he told me it was because my processor was too old. (I know it's a dino-puter! I think we got it in Jan 98) As to what is running, right now, I recognize some of them--NAV, Zone Alarm, but there are things like, "Sgmain, wuauclt, Hposts08, Hposol08, Hpoevm08, Sgbhp" and several others. My guess is Hp would be my HP all-in-one copier, but it isn't on right now.

['KotaGuy]

Sgmain is spywareGuard. SGbhp is SpywareBlaster. Wuauclt is Windows Automatic updates. The processes that start with HP are for your HP peripheral, and they will be running without the All-in-One on, that is normal. I have an older computer as well, not this one, but another that is old... Pentium II 300. Has about the same amount of RAM that is in yours, and the resource usage on that one is about the same. So I think you are ok in that sense.

[EdithBunker]

Okay, sounds like things are as they should be on my computer, then. Since this is the only one I've had, it's still fast enough for me and stores what I need it to. I can still open up to five windows without it squawking at me, at least. Maybe I wouldn't know how to fly one of them-thar jet-powered puters, anyway!! I truly appreciate all the help you've given me. This site is awesome! (I'm sure I'll be back! LOL!)

['KotaGuy]

Glad I was able to help you out. You know where we are if you need us again.