Crash & Burn, Sims 2/Maple Story Crash & Explorer Shuts Down

[northernthangz]

I posted this yesterday and listed it with the wrong title of Sapphire Radeon 9100.

I am having problems with games on my pc. My PC consists of: Maxtor 120 gig hd, 1 gig DDR Ram, Soyo Dragon Plus MB SY-K7V with intergrated lan & sound, Sapphire Radeon 9100, AMD Athlon XP 2000+ CPU, OS Windows XP Home.

When playing Maple Story it tends to crash with an error message that says "Error code : 5 (Access is denied). Also, sometimes when you play the game it just shuts off or the whole computer shuts down.

When playing the Sims 2 it also crashes a lot. It brings up an error message that says something along the lines of "The program has crashed, it will now be terminated."

Internet Explorer occasionally crashes and ask if you want to send an error report.

My other computer has Western Digital 40 gig hd, 256 ddr RAM, Soyo Dragon Plus MB SY-K7V with intergrated lan & sound, Gigabyte Radeon 7500, AMD Athlon XP 1800+ CPU, OS Windows XP Home. Everything runs fine on this computer.

I have tried reformatting my PC and download ATI driver from website instead of cd. Even tried ending processes running in the background. I even tried Firefox & Maxthon and still get "Internet Explorer must shut down".

Any ideas? Please help my daughter is driving me nuts complaining about this.
<!-- / message --><!-- edit note -->

[Enderandrew]

Re: Crash &amp; Burn, Sims 2/Maple Story Crash &amp; Explorer Shuts Down

You're asking for ideas. I gave you a response. Have you tried any of the below yet? Every single PC I've taken in for repair has had tons of spyware on it, and usually about 2 or 3 viruses that people had no clue about.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

You may have spyware and viruses on your computer.

Download a HOSTS file.
Download IE-SPYAD
Download Spybot Search and Destroy.
Download Lavasoft's Adaware 6.
Download Tuneup Utilities 2004.
If you're using Internet Explorer, download Maxthon or Firefox.

Install the above applications. With Spybot and Adaware, you want to update them.

Now, boot the computer in safe mode. It's more likely that fewer spyware programs and viruses will be running in safe mode.

Run a Spybot check. Make sure to click on the immunization tab and immunize against spyware. Also, open up the advanced options. In tools you can check for bad DHO's, and such. anything with a red X can and should be deleted. You can also add Spybot's entries to your HOSTS file automatically.

Run Adaware.

You probably just deleted a bunch of spyware. Now run Tuneup Utilities 2004. This progam is not free, but you'll have a 30 day trial. It will optimize your PC, check for conflicts, and clean up your registry after deleting all that junk. Tuneup Utilities 2004 will also check what's starting up in the background for you.

The hosts file will protect your computer from getting new spyware. Using Maxthon instead of Internet Explorer will block popups, and it will block spyware and the like from being installed on your computer.

Lastly, go to:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com

There is a free, on-line virus scan. It's pretty good.

Also, if you have Windows XP, make sure your firewall is enabled.

Now that your computer is clean, you may have other problems leading to crashes. You can be running out of memory. BlackViper.com has a guide that will show which services you disable in Windows to free up extra memory and improve system performance.

You also want to make sure you have the latest driver for your video card, and the latest patches for the games you are playing.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: Crash &amp; Burn, Sims 2/Maple Story Crash &amp; Explorer Shuts Down

Relatively good info (though I'm convinced you have no idea what a HOSTS file is), but hardly relevant. I've seen very few viruses/spyware that cause problems of this sort. It's usually a driver issue or a hardware issue. Besides, he said he reformatted... Also, if you read the post, you'd see that he already has Firefox and Marathon.

For starters, make sure you've got the latest chipset and video card drivers installed, in that order. Try the video card in a different system to make sure it isn't the problem. It's also possible, though less likely, that the RAM or power supply are causing the problem. You can get memtest from my signature to test out the RAM. What brand PSU is it and what wattage is it?

BTW, the system isn't overclocked, is it?

[kgburns]

Re: Crash &amp; Burn, Sims 2/Maple Story Crash &amp; Explorer Shuts Down

I agree with Yawg, don't really think this problem has anything to do with a virus or spyware

SOYO boards are generally pretty stable and most of the problems I've found with them are generally caused by Power Supplies or memory related.

Run MemTest and if that checks out, then suspect the PSU. (assuming you have already updated the chipset and video drivers)

[Enderandrew]

Re: Crash &amp; Burn, Sims 2/Maple Story Crash &amp; Explorer Shuts Down

I am an IT professional that was been working with computers since the days of IBM XT's. I know damn full well what a HOSTS file is. It is a list of domain names to be forwarded, and can be used to block Windows from interacting with said addresses. IE-SPYAD then ads a similiar list to the Windows registry. That way, your computer doesn't traffick with those internet addresses as all.

I just did an absolute clean install of windows on someone's computer. I went to astalavista to look up a few cracks. I had installed Firefox because everyone swears how safe and stable it is. (I normally use Maxthon, and this PC was not quite as fast or top of the line, and Firefox uses less memory). What do you know? Two spyware apps loaded via ActiveX in the background really quick. It caused random crashes in Windows Media Player, and explorer.exe

Cleaning said spyware fixed those crashes. Considering that spyware programs hijack cpu priority, bandwidth, infect random .dll's, infect random files, replicate, etc. and cause memory issues, then it's really not unreasonable or uncommon for spyware programs to cause random crashes.

We have NO SPECIFIC details on what crashes this person is having, what drivers are installed, or when the crashes are occuring.

Given few details, and the idea that some unexplained phenomenon is occuring on a PC with a net connection, I will always give this advice as a first step in diagnosing the problem.

Do you seriously doubt at all that I've given good advice?

Regardless, saying that Soyo boards in general are stable is a very broad generalization. I worked for HP, and build both workstations and servers for a living. I also spent some time in warranty, troubleshooting, repairing and replacing hardware.

Maxtor HDD's had the greatest percentage of failures of any HDD we ever used. Yet, I don't assume that every Maxtor HDD is bad. Foxconn motherboards were the most stable of any we used. But I don't automatically assume every Foxconn motherboard is good.

The problem with random crashes in the middle of an application is PROBABLY software based. If BIOS doesn't throw out any errors, and Windows installed drivers for all the hardware just fine, and later you're having random crashes, what do you think the chance that the problem is hardware based truly is?

I recommended cleaning the PC, doing basic maintenance, and then installing the proper drivers.

I stand by that advice.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: Crash &amp; Burn, Sims 2/Maple Story Crash &amp; Explorer Shuts Down

I just did an absolute clean install of windows on someone's computer. I went to astalavista to look up a few cracks. I had installed Firefox because everyone swears how safe and stable it is. (I normally use Maxthon, and this PC was not quite as fast or top of the line, and Firefox uses less memory). What do you know? Two spyware apps loaded via ActiveX in the background really quick. It caused random crashes in Windows Media Player, and explorer.exe

So, you're an IT professional that thinks Firefox uses ActiveX? I'm not saying I don'y believe you're an IT professional, but unless you installed the ActiveX plugin for Firefox, you've erred in saying ActiveX (and likely Firefox) has anything to do with it.

We have NO SPECIFIC details on what crashes this person is having, what drivers are installed, or when the crashes are occuring.

When playing Maple Story it tends to crash with an error message that says "Error code : 5 (Access is denied). Also, sometimes when you play the game it just shuts off or the whole computer shuts down.

When playing the Sims 2 it also crashes a lot. It brings up an error message that says something along the lines of "The program has crashed, it will now be terminated."

Internet Explorer occasionally crashes and ask if you want to send an error report.

We do know specific details on the crashes... True that we don't know what drivers are installed, but that's kind of what I was getting at.

Given few details, and the idea that some unexplained phenomenon is occuring on a PC with a net connection, I will always give this advice as a first step in diagnosing the problem.

I have tried reformatting my PC and download ATI driver from website instead of cd. Even tried ending processes running in the background. I even tried Firefox & Maxthon and still get "Internet Explorer must shut down".

I would have gone there myself, but I find it uncommon, at best, to have a PC get reformatted and then encounter the same problem and have the problem be caused by spyware or viruses of any sort. It's made even more unlikely by the fact that another computer being used by the same person doesn't have the problem.

Do you seriously doubt at all that I've given good advice?

Not at all, it's very good adivce. I just don't think it's relevant, in this scenario, at least not yet. I occasionally go to security issues with these sorts of problems, but I don't start out by giving advice on security. Checking for drivers issues and similar software issues created by user error comes first, followed by a HijackThis log to check for spyware or excessive background programs and referalls to Ad-Aware and AVG antivirus, when the user has no virus and spyware protection or has outdated/bad protection. I'll also mention software firewalls when there isn't one or a hardware firewall.

The problem with random crashes in the middle of an application is PROBABLY software based.

I agree that the cause is most often software-based (and I consider drivers software, since they are)

If BIOS doesn't throw out any errors, and Windows installed drivers for all the hardware just fine, and later you're having random crashes, what do you think the chance that the problem is hardware based truly is?

If you just installed Windows and drivers, and then get random crashes, 95% of the time it's either improper driver installation, or hardware problems. That's assuming you're behind a hardware firewall of some sort. A fresh installation without any sort of security that throws up errors is probably a worm (especially if it doesn't have SP2 or even SP1 integrated, when you're talking about XP), or at least some sort of virus or spyware. In this case, we're talking about a computer with a fresh installation of Windows that had the same problems it had before being reformatted and having Windows reinstalled. That screams out user error or hardware issue.

I recommended cleaning the PC, doing basic maintenance, and then installing the proper drivers.

I stand by that advice.

It's not bad advice, but you seem to have an issue with reading the initial post... It's been reformatted with Windows reinstalled and drivers, too. Unless there are two seperate net connection for the two PCs, then they are almost certainly behind a router with a hardware firewall, which means no sort of software maintenance (particularly searching for viruses and spyware) is even relevant.

In any case, it would be helpful to know if Sims 2 is the only game or intensive program that has crashes. Internet explorer crashing does point towards spyware, but since games are having issues, it could be something entirely different.