k,

"but I will not be using the Batersea boys again (asuslaptop.co.uk). "

Sorry to hear that they let you down. Maybe they've changed hands. It's a minute little operation when you see it in the flesh.

You're warning is more up to date than my experiences.

Better luck with the machine.

TP

A mate of mine called in a panic getting a meesage "Explorer.exe Bad Image". From what he says it seems to relate to "windows\system32\browser1" - not a valid windows image...

I gather from general chatter that it could relate to a Trojan infection.

Can anyone help with advice to pass on? (Layman-speak please...)

TIA - :)

Hi Alan

I've never come accross that so I can't help your friend much. I did come accross this article which appears to deal with a similar problem but it's not easy and it appears to refer to a different file so may be irrelevant.

The first thing is to run a virus scan and try to get rid of any nasties that may be there. Also run "chkdsk /f " in a command window. This will indicate whether he has a disk problem.

Thanks Optimist. The problem for him is that the system will not load enough to
allow him to run anything like scandisk. None of the F8 options work when he loads.

He's a bit loathe to doa full rebuild in fear of losing his data - lots of family pics
etc.,

I'll do a bit more surfing for answers...

Alan

If the system will not start at all then you can't tell whether the file damage is caused by a virus or a disk problem.

Either way, the safe way to proceed is to buy a new hard disk and do a clean install of Windows. Once the new system is fully patched and AV installed, then mount the old disk as a secondary and copy the data from it (after virus scanning).

As a modern disk will be larger than 120GB, the new installation must be done from a Win XP SP2 setup disc.

I know that this solution is drastic, but at least it is straightforward and the end result is that your friend will have a machine that he can trust again.

Many thanks Optimist. I'll convey the good news.... ;)

Man in white van has just sorted out my internal house wiring after frequent broadband connectivity drops. I'm a long way from the exchange and get about 500 kbps download and 400 kbps upload. He said the peformance could be improved by reconfiguring to increase the download speed and correspondingly decreasing the upload speed (ie sharing the broadband in different proportions). Anyone know how to do this. The router is a BT Voyager 210 ADSL Router. TIA
TOK

Greystone

For virus problems I can't stress this site enough for great help. You have to register, but it's free, and takes you through it all step by step until you're up and running.

http://boards.cexx.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=8bb1d5bc32bedb408e2c478bf5c665cc&

TOK, what changes were made? Did you get the external wire to visit you modem first before trailing round the house because I think that's what I need to do.

Not sure if this is the sort of problem I can get help with but would be grateful for any advise. The microphone on my logitech web cam cuts out when using skype I have downloaded latest software and moved USB ports but no joy.

Seymour - Yes, that's what he did. The master socket was downstairs but he made the socket in a bedroom/office as the master. Connectivity was dropping several times a day but all OK now. But nobody has come up with any suggestions as to how to re-configure the router.

TOK, not sure but this site looks potentially helpful:

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/MTU2.htm

TOK, I'm not sure how you're getting those speeds but you need to look at the router status page and get the physical speeds that it is connecting at (it sounds like you're looking at the thoroughput given by speed tests). If you do that, also note down the values it gives for downstream attenuation and noise ratio.

In any case doing what he suggests cannot be done on the router, though depending on what you find when you look at the speeds your ISP might be able to help.

Kayak Today is a good day: Speedtest.net shows 1216/382 and the Router Manager shows 1696/448. Not worth mucking about with, I suppose.

Seymour - Thanks for the link. Looks a bit complicated for me but I'll study later.

Thanks to you both

Kayak - Forgot the other bits of info. Attenuation is 61db down and 31.5db up. Noise margin is 15.2db and 18db.

As for getting BT to help, well, nuff said.

TOK those are not bad values at all given the distance you are from the exchange. 448 is as high as it gets on the upload. You could conceivably get BT to put you on a fixed 2048/256 or 1024/256 connection but you would really only want to do that if you get instability, e.g. disconnections. You might get them if your downstream noise margin starts getting below 10.

Well I lived with my new ASUS for justover a week.
After persistent hanging within windows e.g. trying to open control panel and also on IE7 in opening new browser windows I did sucessive system restores right back to the day it arrived - no joy so in the end a full reinstall of XP was necessary and of course back to square one with transfer of all my Outlook and My docs etc.
Today at a clients the touchpad mouse threw a wobbly due to the adjacent BBC radio mast and was unusable. My old HP had some small instability at this client's but still worked. Also the HP picked up a weakish wireless access point without difficulty. The ASUS couldn't even see it. It is faster but with 4x ram and a faster duel core processor that isn't a surprise. The built in web cam is handy but overall a very disappointing experience and if it wasn't for the data/install aggro involved I'd send it back whence it came. :-((

still no news on sp1 for Vista - anybody heard anything?

Bit of a nightmare morning. Any suggestions welcome:
Am running Windows XP on a laptop. Also AVG, ZoneAlarm & Adaware.
Went on to the Windows update site for the latest updates. It prompted me to download the Genuine validation Tool (which I thought I already had as regularly download updates), which I did. Then downloaded 4 security updates & 1 IE cumulative update. No problem, then rebooted.
Then went on to the Net & having looked at MoneyAM baords, went on to goldoilplc.com website which loaded the home page & then immediately froze, with a toolbar request asking me if I wanted to accept & download a Microsoft Data file (at this point I could hear the processor working flat out). I didn't download it but manually shut down & rebooted. Then I ran AVG which found Virus JS/Psyme which it deleted from the Temporary Internet File. I also ran Adaware which found 4 corrupt registry files which it deleted & also 2 files which it said it couldn't delete. These files were C:\windows\system32\wsnpoem\audio.dll and also same file name but video.dll
I tried to find them manually but am unable to find them.
The end result is my machine is working again, but mysteriously the history file has been deleted, but otherwise no problems so far.
Does anyone one know if this particular virus is a bad one, or if the windows files above are genuine windows or corruptions, please?

This is the technical spec on the above virus. I'm none the wiser!!!
"Troj/Psyme-AN is a JavaScript downloader Trojan (usually HTML-based) which exploits the ADODB stream and CODEBASE vulnerabilties associated with certain versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer to silently download a file from a remote website to the affected computer and run it.

When Troj/Psyme-AN is run on Windows 95 or Windows 98 it tries to download and run an executable via the CODEBASE attribute of an object element.

When run on Windows NT, 2000 or XP Troj/Psyme-AN first uses the ADODB Stream exploit to download the remote executable to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\.exe where is a random character string consisting of 1-8 random characters (typically 8 characters) within the range A-Z. It then tries to execute the downloaded file via the CODEBASE exploit.

Troj/Psyme-AN can arrive on the computer via HTML pages containing a link to an infected page. "