Help me avoid os reinstall

[lupi]

Since it's that wonderful spring time of year, the lawn maintenance time has begun. After seeing that scotts had a coupon for some of their seed I went to the siteto print it out. Turns out to get the coupon you have to install some couponbar printer from coupon.com.

The installer for this hanged my computer (think some of my security software didn't like what it was doing). After coming back later, the install reports it failed and I go and try to remove what it did put on my system.

First problem noted was that when I tried too reboot the computer gave me the don't turn the unit off install of update completing. Problem here is I don't remember what install was being done and after being left for 8+ hours it never finished.

Never found out what update that was but after several reboots it just went away.


Next problem is I've got something causing explorer.exe to hang causing the entire computer to hang and occasionally giving me the program crashed warning window.


I tried to solve this by going to system restore which was going to move me back about a week. Little pop up window shows up saying preparing for system restore...and 8 some hours later I check and same little window is there.


What else can I possibly try before going the somewhat painful reinstall route.

 

[C1]

Seems to me Ive encountered this before. Im not optimistic. Two possible approaches are:

1. Keep uninstalling stuff till the problem goes away. Begin with your browser and any printers, then reinstall removed applications.

2. Do an OS repair.

 

[lupi]

For vista 64, where do you do the os repair, seems only option I found in control panel mentioned it would wipe all data currently on haard drive and for that may aas well reinstall.

 

[C1]

I have never tried this with WIN 7. (Normally a repair just replaces critical OS system files and leaves your applications and data intact.) Here is a link that might help with performing a WIN 7 repair:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/5409/create-a-system-repair-disc-in-windows-7/

 

[TJCS]

check system restore to see if you got a point before all this mess.

 

[Level_1]

Try a repair install. Backup anything important first.

 

[lupi]

check system restore to see if you got a point before all this mess.

I tried to solve this by going to system restore which was going to move me back about a week. Little pop up window shows up saying preparing for system restore...and 8 some hours later I check and same little window is there.

12

 

[pete1229]

First of all I offer you my condolences for running Windows Vista anything. If you can boot into safe mode and access the registry try deleting everything that has anything to do with "coupon.com". Search all the registry keys that have a software sub folder to find any and everything!. Then go into msconfig and stop any services which also refer to coupon.com if any. Finally, while still in safe mode go into the control panel, and under programs see if there is anything for the "coupon bar printer" and delete it. Then, shut down, wait a few minutes and power up, that last step may sound like overkill to some but hey, what have you got to loose?

 

[pete1229]

Oh, and btw, system restore in windows 7 is just as bad as in Vista, it just hangs for hours!

 

[lupi]

ill try that. already did a spybot run and it deleted several such instances so not sure if much remains.

 

[lupi]

interesting...going to safe mode with networking allows me to open my browser and webpages without any delays/hangs so it seems something is still lurking around.

 

[lupi]

Done ppalaying around with it tonight, but with it working fine in safe mode I turned off alll services and startup items in msconfig and it started up fine. I only had like 5 non ms services so then reenabled all of those and again it seems to be working fine.

Tomorrow it will be to slowly go through the startup list as it's about a 16 or so long (mostly security programs, couple adobe, couple nvidia, and a couple logitech plus a few others and see how the computer acts after each reboot.

 

[Lanyap]

Go back into safe mode with networking and download, install and run Malwarebytes. Do a quick scan first then come back and do a full scan.

Vista can act crazy sometimes but system restore usually works for me. If this is a Dell and you have a Windows install/recovery disk you can boot it up and try a windows boot repair.

 

[lupi]

MB is one of the security programs I have always instaalled and have run.

Odd thing about restore, went back in after system was stable in safe mode and used msconfig to turn most stuff off to get a stable normal boot but then the computer told me it had no restore points savwd.

 

[Majcric]

I know this defeats the purpose of your thread, but often I find that tweaking and fiddling with the OS to return it to a normal state is more a hassle than the reinstall itself, which can usually be done within an hour to hour and half tops.

Of course, I do realize you probably have things you don't want to lose. So would there be anyway to get these over to a flash or portable harddrive.

On a side note, how long has your OS been installed? The reason I ask is because windows gets stretched over a period of time and often a good clean install will enhance your performance.

 

[Matt1970]

Did you try safe mode and then un-install the toolbar? You can also try this.

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/ie_freezes_or_crashes/

It will detect and remove corrupt IE add-ons.

 

[lupi]

Os is only about 6 months old on the computer, redid it after it's old hardrive went screwy (which is one of the reason I don't really want to sit through and reload it again)

It's not really an Ie problem but the main windows explorer program. before I started disabling a bunch of stuff to get to a cleam boot state like now it would take several minutes from a fresh reboot till the computer did anything after me hitting ctl-alt-del to open the task manager or opening up the control panel. even just a right click would hang a minute or so till a response.

 

[lupi]

looks like i've got my computer back. seems the spyware nature of that coupon.com crap really screwed up zonealarm and avast. unistall and reinstall of both has removed all the performance hangs I was having.

 

[C1]

Glad it worked out. You were lucky because the coupon thingy wasnt really spyware per se. However, real spyware can be problematic to remove & my experience is that an OS repair usually wont do it. On the other hand, if it is not a formal spyware (just something hosed because of a bad install), then the initial advice I provided can work.

 

[lowrider69]

looks like i've got my computer back. seems the spyware nature of that coupon.com crap really screwed up zonealarm and avast. unistall and reinstall of both has removed all the performance hangs I was having.

My GF has had that coupon printer software installed on her laptop(XP) for three years and never had an issue with anything. I think she even updated the coupon printer software a few months ago. Anyway, I looked into it a while ago because I didn't trust it and I didn't find a problem with it. Avast, Eset, or MBAM don't flag it as malware. I think my mom also has it installed on her Vista system and never had an issue. I'm thinking something else was screwed with your system.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm thinking something else was screwed with your system.

Yeah, he had ZoneAlarm on there. ZA is bad juju to systems, in my experience. My father has a paid version, and he's always rebuilding his systems, not because he got a virus, but because installing programs makes it screwy.

Hell, I had him test something with his firewall, and he moved his wifi connection from the trusted zone, to the internet zone, and it hung his machine. Tell me ZA isn't fscked.

 

[lupi]

spybot did.

 

[stargazr]

Yeah, he had ZoneAlarm on there. ZA is bad juju to systems, in my experience. My father has a paid version, and he's always rebuilding his systems, not because he got a virus, but because installing programs makes it screwy.

Hell, I had him test something with his firewall, and he moved his wifi connection from the trusted zone, to the internet zone, and it hung his machine. Tell me ZA isn't fscked.

I agree. I had to uninstall it from gf's computer because her games kept crashing it. Switched to Trend, no problems.