Andavari

If they weren't able to force it to land that ain't what would have been fired at it the third and final time.

indeed. If the OS in question is Win9x running ScanDisk by itself may fix some errors. It also wouldn't hurt to run System File Checker (start, run, sfc.exe) to find and replace corrupt files. I wouldn't use a third-party disk defragger until the error is resolved, I surely don't remember the two I previous used VoptXP, and Diskeeper ever checking the disk for errors before defragmenting it. If there are corrupt files and the disk is defragmented it could create more problems -- just try to avoid having to format the disk it's a royal time consuming pain in the a$$.

I had a "similiar problem" approximately 90% of the time on my Dell Dimension 8300 system running WinXP Pro. My shutdown/restart problem would happen immediately after running a full antivirus scan using eTrust EZ Antivirus, or after the system was on a long period of time. I was able to turn off the system by holding the power button for about 6 to 8 seconds however that isn't necessarily a good thing since that may damage or corrupt files since it may be considered a bad shutdown. When I updated the system BIOS it completely disappeared.

Yeah 512 MB Ram should be considered the minimum for WinXP, also many moderately priced PC's generally come with at least 512 MB Ram. To allow WinXP to run smoother on a less powerful system (actually any system) is to disable resource hog features like XP themes. Also don't allow unnecessary programs to run in the systray, too many programmers think they're software should start when the system does thus slowing down systems. Really only antivirus, firewall, and antispyware software, and optionally ad filtering software are all that really needs to be running in the systray.

CCleaner lists the file missing in "C:\WINDOWS\System32" from your CCleaner screenshot. However it looks as though it is installed in "H:\WINDOWS\System32" from your search screenshot -- that's probably the problem if you have Windows installed on the H:\ drive. Edit: I just looked through my registry on WinXP Pro and didn't even see a systray.exe listing under any of the Run areas. Perhaps it loads some other way not through the registry, it isn't in Win.ini, or System.ini either, yet all my icons load.

I use Sonic RecordNow v6 (Dell OEM version), although it's easy to use it lacks many features some freeware alternatives have. A free alternative which I use is burnatonce. It doesn't contain any ad's, spyware, or any malware. Caveat: If you're going to use burnatonce I'd recommend you have Windows 2000, or XP as your operating system and to use the SPTI interface via (Options->General), it's the Win2k, WinXP built in ASPI layer. I don't recommend using it on Win9x systems since it may or will have problems running on Win9x systems for various reasons -- one being Adaptec's ASPI layer and its bugs.

I turn mine off for the simple fact is I don't want a power failure to corrupt the OS or files. There's enough thunderstorms here in the midwest during the spring and summer that cause far too many power failures, hence the reason I turn mine off when not in usage.

The funny thing is everytime I run the WinXP disk defragmenter and then open PageDefrag it doesn't show any fragmentation -- so who knows how successful they really are on WinXP systems. On Win98 it's a completely different matter since the Win98 disk defragmenter won't even touch system.dat, and user.dat, those files will become very fragmented but there's some hope as detailed below. On Win98 a completely free way to "defrag", "compact" the Win98 registry is at a command prompt in MS-DOS type in: SCANREG /FIX This will cause the Microsoft Registry Checking program to rebuild the whole registry, I've used it for years with my Win98 system and not once has it ever caused any problems.

What version of Windows are you using? Exit running programs which will free up some memory before attempting to defrag. You can optionally defrag in Safe Mode which will automatically disable startup programs.

Well F-Prot is known for giving false alarms on some compressed files, however it's usually only if they've been compressed with UPX. I immediately decompress any UPX compressed files I come across, since F-Prot isn't the only av scanner that can give a false warning. There's tons of compressed executables floating about - for instance lossy audio encoders LAME, MPC, OGG, etc.

[qoute]CCleaner should also be able to clean subdirectories within those custom folders.[/qoute] It does remove files in sub-directories on my system. Although the folders themselves stay intact. I hadn't used the Custom Folders cleaner before since I use a batch file for that.