Hi. My computer recently started acting up. I first noticed it when Firefox started spamming me with popups. I ran adaware, spybot, adaware again, and spybot again, and it didn't stop. I made sure the definitions were up to date. I even ran a virus check twice and didn't find anything.

I then noticed that when I tried to open one of the folders on my computer, it would make Windows Explorer close down. I eventually figured out it was a file a friend had sent me a long time ago, but I'd never had any trouble until now. I've had this file at least 6 months and it was corrupt when I got it and wouldn't play (it was a video file), yet it never effected the entire folder until now. I couldn't delete the file because I couldn't open the folder, but I managed to quarantine it with my norton antivirus and get rid of it that way.

Also, firefox has decided it likes to randomly shut down on me. It doesn't matter if I'm using it or not, but if I have it open, it'll randomly close all the firefox windows and tabs.

I was wondering if there could be anything related between those three things and what I could do to fix whatever is doing that. I realize the popups may just be the fact that firefox is getting more popular and so people are designing more popups to go with it, but it seems like I've been getting more popups than I would if I was just using IE.

Also, my main concern. I was working in MS Word today, writing a paper for english, and after about 15 minutes, it shut down. That's nothing that surprised me too much, I've seen word do that before. But when I opened it up again and it poped up saying it had saved what I had been working on and asked if I wanted to open that template, I clicked to open it and it closed with the same error. Every time I tried this, it closed with that error. I decided to try to search for the temp file using Windows Explorer to see if I could open it another way, and after a few seconds, Windows Explorer randomly shut down. I tried a few different things and determined that whenever it tried to search for a file which a Word document had the name of, windows explorer would randomly close. I searched for a program I could open just fine in Word, but Windows Explorer would close on me. I ran a search on a word I knew wouldn't pop up with a Word document, and the search ran just fine.

Now, I didn't have service pack 2 cause I heard horrible things about what it could do when it came out, but I figured maybe something with that could help. So, I backed up all my important files and then installed service pack 2, but I'm still having the trouble with the word files (haven't had time to see if firefox is doing anything funky with shutting down).

Does anyone know what's wrong with my computer and what I can do to help it? Do I need to reinstall windows or is there an easier solution that will make me happier?

Thanks so much to anyone who replies

~Firefox is still randomly shutting down

Ok, First lets try to take care of firefox, uninstall it in the control panel.

Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add Remove Programs. (Select Firefox)

When it is done unistalling, reboot your computer if it prompts you to. Then click on the link in my sig. to firefox Download and reinstall firefox. (If you still want to use it as your browser.)



Now as for MS word. I would start simple. Try running a windows update, as that also as patches for Office products. It is possible that it is a bug that needs to be fixed. To run a windows update go to.

Start>Windows Update

or

Start>All Programs> Windows Update

Install any thing you think that may help. Let us know how it goes.

Thanks,
Also thanks for being detailed in your post, it will help us, help you.
And Welcome to Daniweb!

-T

Thanks tayspen. I tried what you told me, but it didn't solve either problem. Except now firefox tells me sometimes when it decides to close.

Anyway, I decided to try to isolate the .doc problem a bit more and see if I could figure out what folder makes the search close. So I opened up Windows Explorer and told it to search documents for * (cause that's wildcard). It turns out it doesn't actually have a problem with the .doc's, cause some showed up in the results. And the folder that made windows explorer close was my control panel. I tried to open the control panel up through my start menu. All it did was make the screen loose the taskbar for 2 seconds (it does that when windows explorer randomly closes like that) and then reappear without the control panel open.

Any idea what's making that happen and what could be done to fix it? I'm figuring I'm just going to reinstall windows over the weekend, but I'd prefer to figure out a solution other than that before the weekend so I don't have to

Just something to provide more info maybe.

could you go to Control panel, then Admin Tools. Open up "Event Viewer". (Event Viewer is a tool, that stores, and allows you to view, all Errors that programs produce, but don't neccesarily show on screen, if you didn't know)

Start using your PC, then when something that shouldn't happen, happens, look at event viewer, in all three logs, and copy and paste to here, any logged events, with either a Yellow, or Red Warning message, that occured at the time you ran into problems. Make sure to look in Applications and System, and Security if nothing is found in the other two.

If you can find anything, it'll make searching for a solution a lot easier.

Regards, david

Thats the thing... I can't open my control panel. It just closes when I try to open the folder

Can you use the Start -> Run function, to run the following;

c:\windows\system32\eventvwr.exe or c:\winnnt\system32\eventvwr.exe

This will launch Event Viewer Directly, I just feel that the information in Event viewer will provide more possibilities in finding a solution.

Hmmm...Cant open CP...sounds like you may have a virus...

Yeah, but I've run like a thousand virus scans since my computer started acting funny. I even booted into safe mode to do a virus scan and see if that might help, but my computer hasn't found a thing.

I would post a log of hijack this is the virus section. They could help you more.(dload hijack this by following sticky in virus section)

-T