T-Jay texted me in a panic yesterday. His computer would not let him open ANY files….nothing, zilch. The anti-virus program that he had, Norton, told him that it had no viruses. Last night I picked up the PC to see if I could figure out what the issue was while I had it hooked up next to my laptop.
I googled the problem “windows cannot any open files” to see if anyone else had had this problem. The only info I found was for Windows XP and this PC is running Vista. Kind of bizarre, I have always found fixes this way.
Since the PC would not let me get online, I copied the free programs that I use to a thumb drive and then was able to install them on the PC. I was surprised to see it would even let me do that. It now has Malwarebytes, Avast!, Secunia PSI, and CCleaner installed. Secunia PSI is a great program that scans your PC’s programs and lets you know if they need to be updated or patched.
The first thing I ran was Malwarebytes. It found 52 infected files, including 2 Trojans. Then I ran Avast! and it showed the PC to be clean. After that, I cleaned up the left-over bits and pieces with CCleaner. While doing that I disabled some of the gazillion start up items to make it start a bit faster. Then it was time for Disk Cleanup, but first I opened the command prompt and entered cleanmgr/sageset:99 and pushed enter. This opens the Disk Cleanup and gives you more options like cleaning out old error logs etc. You only have to do this once because the PC will remember it next time. I then ran CCleaner one more time. Secunia PSI needs an internet connection so T-Jay will have to run that one when I bring the PC back to him.
I then created a new folder on the desktop called “Anti Virus Tools” and filled it up with shortcuts to Avast!, CCleaner, Disk Cleanup, Defraggler, Malwarebytes, Secunia PSI and System Restore to make it easy for T-Jay to remember which programs to try first if he runs into another problem.
Oh…..I can open all the programs again!! 🙂
This morning I’m running the Disk Defragmenter. It started at 8:40. It’s now 1:20 PM and might take a few more hours since it hasn’t run since 1/13/2009. After that is finally finished I’ll create a restore point. Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s ever going to finish defragging.
I just found out that Disk Defragmenter is not working. WFT? All this time wasted. Oh well…time to download Defraggler. It’s installed and working….woohoo! Mission accomplished. I’m sure T-Jay will be very happy to get his PC back up and running.
Okay, now to take out the trash and figure out why there is no propane coming into my home! WFT? I just switched to the new tank yesterday and I have no heat!!! SHIT!
Tango's Going Ons 