Hmmm.

HomeLAN

HomeLAN

New Member
So, I was going to burn a DVD on the wife's machine (Win 98-SE). Fired up Roxio disc copier, and before I even pointed it to any source files, the DVD-R spun up, and the machine sort of locked. The mouse would move, but you couldn't execute any commands. Had to hit the reset key.

When it booted back up, it would go to a desktop, the mouse would move, but no access to do anything at all. The three finger salute took forever to come up, and then it just stopped responding. It'll go into safe mode fine, but not a real boot. I uninstalled the offending program. I killed everything in the startup menu except systray. I ran SFC in safe mode and replaced everything it asked for. No dice. It boots to the desktop, you can move the mouse, but it's totally unresponsive to commands. It's like it's stuck in a software loop or something, and it won't do anything else.

Before I scrub the drive and reinstall windows, any ideas?
 
did you have a dvd, blank or other in the drive.
I've seen bad recordables do the periodically.
 
Yeah, but I pulled it out of there. No dice.

Luckily, my back-ups are good. I just finished sneaker-netting what she did in the past few days.

Oh, and V6. I've uninstalled it, though. No dice.
 
Have you updated that machine wiht Mediaplayer 9 ?
I think it's got roxio built-in, and it might conflict. :confused:

I use nero all the time, so I don't know on that.

I've see cables work loose and do that too...
Anytime any drive has a hard time reading, it can lock the whole OS.
I've even seen floppy drives do it, because of cable, or power...
 
do you think you may have one of these in your system?

Rootkit...
There has been quite a lot in the news the past several days concerning a new "rootkit" type DRM solution from Sony. When inserting one of their products that contains this DRM on a Windows PC optical drive, anyone that has auto play enabled on their Windows computer and agrees to the end user license agreement in order to play the CD, will have a cloaking software installed to their hard drive without their knowledge and consent. Unfortunately, once installed it is difficult to remove properly and this even goes for experienced PC technicians. There is also a possibility that your CD drive would be rendered inoperative among other things. To remove the product also requires the use some help and a "patch" from Sony. It is being reported that in order to obtain the patch and instructions, that there are some privacy concerns connected with the procedure and people have even had to explain why they would like to remove the malware from their computer prior to obtaining assistance from Sony.

At first, this DRM solution was being looked upon as spyware or malware, but now, the situation has become much more serious. It is now believed that this cloaking technology will render anyone who has it installed upon their computer to be vulnerable to hackers and new viruses. Here is an excerpt from an article written by News Editor Seán Byrne:

"It has also been found to introduce a security vulnerability as well as potentially crash Windows during its installation of the patch to 'decloak it'. Once the user agrees to the EULA when the CD is loaded, the rootkit is installed, which makes files, directories and registry keys beginning with '$sys$' invisible to the system, such as those used by the Cd's DRM software.

As Sony's rootkit can hide files and registry keys, this introduces quite a serious security risk, since hackers, viruses or other unwanted software can make themselves invisible also on any system with this rootkit installed just by adding a $sys$ to the beginning of its file/directory names or registry keys. This is what makes it such a concern for the companies behind anti virus software since it cannot detect these type of files."
Click to expand...
 
Hell, anything's possible. I'd be surprised, but I've been surprised in the past.

Cat, I'll pop the box open and double-check before I do anything drastic. Thanks for that possibility.
 
no prob.
comp diagnostic isn't just a job, it's my hobby. :nerd:

hmmm, may have to plug that in that other thread... :D
 
Professur said:
Unplug the burner and give it a shot.
Click to expand...

Another good idea that didn't occur to me yesterday. Thanks for the help, folks. When I get home tonight, I'll try this stuff. If nothing works, it's format time. *sigh*
 
OK, it's back. At another buddy's suggestion, I went into regedit, went into the HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run section and waxed everything I could find relating to Roxio and Easy CD/DVD Creator. Rebooted, and it came up like a dream.

I'm now reinstalling the program. Let's see if I can make it crash again. :lloyd:

Thanks for the help, folks!
 
It's now an Athy 1700+, but she still won't let me upgrade the OS. It's no biggie, though, as I get questions from 98 users all the damned time, and this way I have a running machine to reference if need-be.
 
Nope. As long as she won't let me upgrade it, I'm covered, aren't I?

Besides, if it well and truly craps out, I may push her into XP. I was considering it if I couldn;t get her machine out of this jam. At that point, I actually already have a tray if necessary.
 
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