Date: 05/21/05 (Computer Help)    Keywords: browser, spyware

I saw luckysafire's post linked somewhere, so I figured I could find help here too.



The original problem started in the first week of April, so I'm starting there.

This is what the message looks like:

ERROR 013c4225: The service cannot accept control messages at this time. : $

When it sits in the windows tray, it looks like I've opened a folder, or something like it:



Here's what happens:

I sit down at the computer on Saturday night [first week of April] as soon as my sister got off. All of a sudden that error message pops up as soon as I get on AIM. I thought it was an AIM thing, so I click out of it. And it comes back. In threes. I restart the computer and don't get onto AIM. I start up Mozilla Firefox and go to LJ, reply to a comment, then try to change icons using a drop-down menu. Big mistake. I learned after restarting fifty million times that the drop-down menus trigger the error message to pop up. [I'm not sure what happened with AIM the first time, because the message came up without me being on Mozilla.]

Someone said to re-install my browser, Mozilla Firefox. I do.

Someone else said to download HijackThis. I do.

Nothing works. I downloaded other spyware blockers/detectors, and they cleaned out some bugs [about 200 bugs ><] but this error message still comes back. And I just don't know what to do. The error message's numbers change every time I restart, but the message is the same. haunted_spark said his college had something like this happen and he couldn't register for classes on time because of some virus. But nothing is being picked up by any of the scans.

I've run:
HijackThis
Spybot Search And Destroy
AVG AntiVirus Scan
Ad Aware
Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta
there was at least one other but I don't know what it was since my files were wiped later

I asked around different message boards people referred me to, but no one responded except for one person who said she/he had the same problem.

I've stopped using Firefox, and went back to Netscape, and haven't had the problem, but I'd prefer to use Firefox because of the popups that Netscape lets through which are starting to gather more spy/ad-ware.


Since then, my computer's run very slow, and isn't keeping up with the time, when I get online, it says the same time as when I got off before.

I have two hard drives [the main one is 3 gigs and the other is 4 -- it's a really old computer, it used to run Win95]. One day I let my sister online again to check her email and go to take a shower. When I get back and go online, the Blue Screen Of Death appeared [I should have taken a picture of it because I don't know what it said now] and my computer wouldn't start up. It would start the normal DOS bit, where it checks the boot record of my floppy and CD drives, but then it would say Windows could not start because the following file [or driver, I can't remember] is missing: System32\DRIVERS\pci.sys. So I grabbed my eMachines Restore CD and popped it in there. It asked to reformat the hard drive, and I let it. But it reformatted the wrong one. It deleted the drive I use for storing things like photos and school papers, and left my Windows drive alone, even though it said it would reformat that drive. So now all of my photos and things are gone, and I've still got my junky Windows XP.

After that, I figured it couldn't get any worse, right? Except refusing to start up? Well now I get this message when I start up.



Then when XP started up, it said my clock was wrong [which it was], and told me to reset it. When it finally loads up everything, it says that it's 01 January 1999.

A few people have told me that could be a problem with the motherboard, and another friend of mine said that she got that message and her motherboard fried a few weeks later, so that doesn't give me much hope.

This also started after my sister got offline. She refuses to believe that she's got anything to do with it, but whenever something like this happens, it's right after she's online. And every time I get online and somehow have a virus problem, I can retrace my steps and figure out what happened and fix it. But since it's her problem, I don't know where it came from. It may have been something through AIM or an IM service, or through something she did on Firefox.

And now when I get online, Spybot and the Microsoft AntiSpyware have windows coming up saying that spyware is trying to install. And it's different spyware every time I start up, but after I remove it and then run a scan, nothing comes up, so I don't know what's triggering it.

So I have absolutely no idea what's going on. I've had this computer for about three years, so it's outdated, but my dad is too cheap to get even a new printer cartridge, so the only way I'm going to get a new computer is when I get a new job.

Is there something you know of to stop any one of these problems?

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computer_help/403079.html