follow up on registry errors

[Jake]

I'd like to say thanks for your suggestions and I tried a few things which I'll run by you. I uninstalled a few programs I thought might be a part of the problem I'll list them. Instant Messenger,ICQ, PC-CILLAN. I then reinstalled IM and left the other tow out. I then installed another virus program,Mcafee. and did a little file clean up. I also turned off a IE 5 option to remember passwords etc... I went to McAfee.com and found you can scan for viruses from there home site. I did this and what do you think happened? It said I had 46 files that had the same virus attached. The only problem is I update my virus def. once a month and scan regularly without picking up a virus. ( with PC-CILLAN ) The other problem is all the files effected are doc files from Microsoft Word. I was able to clean them all except one. I went to look for the file and got confused on which one it was (should have written it down) so I went back on the Mcafee site and scanned again. This time no viruses found!!!! I am not sure why I didn't get a chance to get rid of the one file that the virus scan could clean. But it didn't show up. So I'm leaving the virus scanner running in the background and we'll see what happens. Do any of you think I'm on the right trail? Also These doc. files were basic word documents no marcos or anything like that. Plain text!!! Give me some help here! Thanks, Jake

[CMonster]

A virus can do some nasty things, that is for sure...I have also heard of false alarms particularly from Mcafee and especially if you have a bad area of memory.

Another thing I can personally attest to is that if you have sufficiently screwed up the registry sometimes only a format and reinstall will fix things.

I have screwed the registry up several times by overclocking, once because of bad memory, and once because of restoring windows from a corrupted hard drive -

a complete format and reinstall was necessary in a couple of cases

[Jake]

Well I was hoping to isolate and particular program that might be the coluprit! I'm not sure how long it will last but so far I've been scanning every time i finish running a particular program and no registry screw ups yet. One other thing I did was reinstall the distplay drivers and sound driver's. I never liked the sound card included with the computer (on board) and had to reinstall the driver for other reasons in the past this time maybe I got luck and can avoid a full reinstall. Thanks for the assistance.

Jake

[Susan]

If you would like to be sure that you do not have a virus on your system, you can download an evaluation of Antiviral Toolkit Pro. It's a great program.

www.avp.com/download.html (http://www.avp.com/download.html)