sonsie

I think it's still free - at least mine was and I just got it 1-2 weeks ago. Well, I thought it was a long shot but figured I'd throw it out there. It just seems so bizarre to have 4 harddrives and possibly a motherboard or 2 - or some combination thereof - go bad in a 4 month period and the monitor was the only thing I hadn't figured into the equation. I've even moved from a house into an apartment during that time, so it wasn't anything to do with physical location, wiring, internet service, etc. One more thought...is it possible that there's a software application that's causing it? I suppose I could do a search on everything I have to see if there are other similar complaints. I probably would have heard of it, but ya never know. Every few months I come across obscure problems being talking about that I never heard of. sonsie

burtman wrote: Absolutely agreed. And if the human brain guessing was the only thing we had to worry about, there'd be no problem. But anyone who's serious about obtaining passwords, as hackers are, don't guess. They have computers that go through the alphabet and try every permutation in existence until they get a match. That's why security experts advise throwing as many wrenches at them as possible such as symbols, caps, and numbers. Takes them much longer. So, once they get a correct password, they can then try it on as many accounts that belong to that person as possible - another thing they specialize in. Pick a name at random and do a search for it on a few search engines - you'll more than likely find it and then you have a name and a site that go together. Even if you narrow it down by entering an age and state into the search, you'll probably come up with a result. I have 25-30 sites that require a password. I do repeat them. I actually only have about 8 passwords, but have to keep up with which ones go where, as well as usernames. And experts say even that isn't enough - they recommend a different password for every site you need one for. And as I also said in the post: "I used to store them in my email account, but recently I printed them out and now keep them in my desk." I live alone and will take the chance of a burglar finding them before I'll take the risk of having them in cyberspace. Germ transfer on a fingerprinting machine is no more risky than touching everything we touch in our everyday lives - money is one of the dirtiest things we touch everyday and not many people wash their hands afterwards - and then we eat a burger, lick our fingers, rub our eyes, etc. Give me a fingerprint scanner over a retinal scanner anyday. I worked in a medical lab for a lot of years and every time we left a microscope or started to use one we had to clean the eyepieces. Nothing like that would be necessary for a fingerprint scanner - probably at the end of a shift would suffice. I've heard of employers requiring the monthly password changes - good idea I'd guess. Security experts recommend that we all change our passwords every few months. Too much hassle for me, but I do change my email and bank passwords every year or so. For the most part I agree. I don't think someone's going to spend time searching for my passwords to my boring email. But identity theft does happen to average people. I figure why take a chance when it's so easy to at least try to prevent? from fraudlines.com 2003--- sonsie

I love the idea of hiding my usernames and passwords somewhere in cyberspace. I haven't mentioned this on any forum yet, but I have time now so I figure it might be a small warning and save someone some grief. Security-wise, I don't know how significant it is, but I've quit shopping for and comparing password programs, and in fact, I used to store them in my email account, but recently I printed them out and now keep them in my desk. A few months ago, in the course of googling stuff and just kind of following link after link and seeing where I ended up, I happened on a cached page with nothing on it except member usernames and passwords for a well-known site - 513k worth of them. They were just typed like this: username:password username:password username:password...and on and on, line after line of nothing but that. It was from the years 2002-2003. I figure that someone with a more criminal mind than I have could probably put the info on that page to use in some way. I just checked and it can still be accessed - no official has found it and done something. Another thing I did after finding it was to make new, more difficult passwords, mixing up symbols, cap and small letters, and numbers. I used to use the same one ALL the time. I now have 25-30 accts that need a password - some significant, some fluff - and that page still comes to mind when I log into my bank account or something equally important. I spose all someone would have to do is start googling some of those names to find sites they're members of, and give the logon info a try. I know several people who use the same password all the time, for all sites, even their mail and computer. I'm sure there are some extremely dependable, safe password programs available, but for me, personally, I just can't see risking their use. Anyway, thought I'd pass that along. sonsie

I did a google for "What is CiSvc?" and got lots of good info and one link in particular was to one of my fave forums - bet that's where you saw me...castlecops? no...hmmm..didn't log on there recently. oh you may have seen posts. Anyway, I have much faith and trust in castlecops (as I'm also establishing here ) and altho the posts were from 2004, lots of people were disabling cisvc due to some info someone posted saying it's safe to do so. So I did it! Pulled up the site for the Hive program, but got sidetracked back here by a post about password programs - had to stop to type a note there, and after a shower I'm going to install the Hive. I am woman hear me rooaarrrr. errr...in this case...bzzzzzzzz. Thanks for checking out the PlugnPlay info! I'll keep my fingers crossed. sonsie

ok, I think I can find the courage to mess with the registry, but will have to work on the courage to disable CiSvc. I'll see what layperson info I can find for my own peace of mind, but could I ask... why is it ok to disable it? And how do I know that the errors/warnings I'm having from it aren't indicators of a genuine problem? I'm still wondering about that file I found. If you don't have any ideas that's cool, but if the question has gotten lost in the shuffle, would someone please look at my description of it? I don't know what it is other than a configuration settings file which mentions 'Root Entry' and 'auds' and 'vids'. From previous post: Thanks! sonsie

Not surprised you have friends here - it's not far. Yep, nice people. LOLOL Neither. Event Type: Warning Event Source: PlugPlayManager Event ID: 260 Description: The service "CiSvc" vetoed a target device change request. ...and when I sent it in to MS, this is what their blurb said: Symbolic Name: WRN_TARGET_DEVICE_CHANGE_SERVICE_VETO Message: The service "%1" vetoed a target device change request. Explanation Your request to safely remove a device from the system was overridden by the specified service. The most likely cause was that the service was using that device at the time. User Action Try to remove the device later or, if you don't need the service, stop it and then try to remove the device. ummm...but I'm not trying to remove anything. I've been told that about computers and their parts going kaput - he said you can buy a new one and it may last for 5 yrs or 5 days. sheesh...they can put a man on the moon, but ........ I didn't answer your message again... I didn't see it until I'd written that long post answering the question you asked in it - figured you'd find it. LOL sonsie

Hiyas lokoike, <snicker snicker> great 'post-erior' indeed. Well, ever really, because the past couple of months are the first time I've had a firewall. Actually, I don't crash, or it's very rare - like 3 times in 3 months. My last computer crashed all the time...anywhere from 3-4 times/day to 45-50 times/day. I won't stress about the dumping for now since it hasn't done it since those two. Motherboard: CPU Type AMD Sempron, 1600 MHz (8 x 200) 2800+ Motherboard Name ECS K8M800-M2 (3 PCI, 1 AGP, 1 CNR, 2 DDR DIMM, Audio, Video, LAN) Motherboard Chipset VIA VT8380 K8M800, AMD Hammer System Memory 512 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM) BIOS Type Award (09/18/05) Motherboard Manufacturer: Company Name Elitegroup Computer Systems Product Information http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Products/Prod...nuID=16&LanID=0 BIOS Download http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Downloads/Cat...px?Categoryid=1 ATA Device Manufacturer: Company Name Western Digital Corporation Product Information http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products LOL No, not a Dell or a Gateway. The computer is made by a local company called DIT Computers. It was started by one man about 10 years ago, not quite in, but close to the proverbial garage. They only have 4 storefronts - three in Nebraska and one in Iowa. I followed a link to resellers.com and found some customer comments there. Unfortunately, they were all at least 5 years old, but the gist was people either loved DIT (more) or weren't crazy about them (a couple). No one said they were horrible, just that they wouldn't buy there again, even though prices are usually better than internet prices. Seems like the complaints were mostly on the customer service side, but a few were about products. There's not a lot to choose from in Omaha as far as repairs/techs. I've heard that places like Best Buy charge a non-refundable $100 diagnostic fee, don't do the work there but send it off somewhere, and the computer could easily be gone for 6-8 weeks after being told it would be a couple of weeks and no contact letting you know this (2 sides to every story, though). At DIT, there's a non-refundable $50 diagnostic fee and normally a wait of 5-7 days before they start on it because of the backup and prob not enough techs, but once they start, it's normally less than a couple of days to be finished. If the computer is one of theirs, service is free for the life of the computer. If it's been in the shop within the previous 90 days, there's no 5-7 day wait - you're priority and they take you right away. As for products, I haven't a clue except that they're name brands. Here's their website: http://www.ditcorp.com Hds are labeled C: and E:, with system files on C:. If I remember correctly, there are two actual HDs, not just one that's been partitioned - am almost positive of that. Partitioning...hmmm...I know I should know this, and have seen where to find the info before, but have forgotten. I *think* neither are partitioned. OK, there's some answers for ya, now a couple of questions.... What about that .ini file I found all by its lonesome? From different post: It seems like it's significant given the fact that I had 'debug' info regarding videos on the scan I did, as well as on the system log. Speaking of the scan I did, do you want a copy? It's a Lavalys Everest application (freeware) which seems pretty darned in-depth. If you run everything and don't condense the report, the help files say there could easily be 2MB of data. Everything looked good on mine (I think) except for video and monitor - and that reminds me...I was able to run the chkdsk /r last night, and then did defrag. Since then I've been getting plug and play errors on system log, which is one of the first errors I got a couple weeks ago. Last question...what on earth could be causing my hardware to go bad??!! Ideas? And why doesn't anything show up as problematic in my device manager? or the diagnostics I ran? btw, interestingly, I haven't had any errors since 5am or so when I did the chkdsk and defrag, with the exception of a couple of plug and play errors. hmmm...ok, just kind of brainstorming here - I know next to nothing about the workings of computers. Would it be possible/likely that something with my monitor is causing the problems? That would sure explain why the techs at the shop rarely had any of the probs I did, and also why I'm having almost the same probs with this new computer as the old. Just a thought. The monitor is a Proview. Hi Andavari, I know...I'm frustrated to say the least and don't know what to blame. I'm not blindly defending DIT - but check out their site. They're not what I would expect from a 4 storefront operation. I did get the chkdsk to run. That hive thing? does it do something to the registry? and since that error's a couple of weeks old, should I do the cleanup anyway? sonsie darn! sorry about that double post. I didn't think the first one went because when the page finally changed, it said 'unable to find page'. aarrgghhh

tried to delete - was a duplicate and very long

good news! I finished the scannow, altho once into it I realized I prob didn't need to repeat. LOL I guess it ran before - my prob, as usual, is I often don't know when I've reached the end point of a procedure. anyway, good news is that i did the cmd to chkdsk /r and it looks ok so far. before, i didn't even get to the point where it asked if i wanted to when it shut down. so i'm going to run that, and on E too, then defrag it all. and that's it for computer's for me tonight, workwise anyway. blech! ptooie! Springfield MO, and no, wouldn't consider myself a farm gal by any means. Just lived on a baby farm (5 acres) for a few years. Get this - this is how NOT country I am...we had some hens and 3 roosters. The roosters had a heirarchy and the head guy's name was Too Tall and came up to my knees (I'm 5'6"). He was mean! We'd just walk out the door and he come rushing over. After about a year, he actually began making contact now and then and/or actually chasing us. My then husband was gone for 10 days or so at a time. This one time I got fed up with Too Tall so I shot him with the shotgun. And then buried him! Had to do something otherwise it would attract the coyotes into the yard. so yeah...i'm a farm gal...not! And yes, the others positions changed and next in line got too aggressive and yep, you guessed it. i'm an animal lover and wouldn't hurt one unless my life depended on it - and we felt like it did at times! sheesh! who knew?! Since I won't be traipsing in and out in the snow with an armful of computer like I did several times before, I agree that this would be a good opportunity to get acquainted with my computer. I'm not stupid - I just don't have the necessary knowledge not to screw up, and that intimidates me. thank you so much! will probably speak with you again soon. take care. sonsie thanks for the info on chkdsk /r. some people just want to know what to do to make it better, but i want information. don't know how much i'll remember, but i figure it makes a small dent. LOL very cool. i now know what to do if it won't do a chkdsk. 293 pieces of info down, 5.6 billion to go. computers! whew!

OK, but what do I do when it's done transferring/copying the files? I just started it (and quit to come back here) and it did the same thing where it started copying. And before, when it was done, I again typed in sfc /scannow and it again asked for the files.

ok, I see what you mean. hmmm...then it wasn't even coming close to what I asked it to do. As soon as I hit 'enter' after the scan order, it said it would need files for .dll. I put in the CD, and it copied them, which it shouldn't have done if I understand correctly. btw, not sure how much longer I'll last. Once I get frustrated without getting that reward of being able to do what I set out to do on the computer, the frustration level doesn't go down and I know I might as well do something else. I'd like to get this scan if possible, tho. I lived NW of Springfield on a small farm for about 5 yrs. btw #2...we're getting 11-14 inches of snow tonight on top of the 4-5 we got today - so I have time. LOL 'nother edit...if this were you, and your computer was still under warranty, would you go through these investigating procedures? or just take it in to the shop?

maybe, but i didn't put it in until i was asked for it. and even then, i tried it with no CD after it asked for files again...there was no CD in and it should have recognized that the files were all there. right?

This is why I hate doing procedures I've never done before. They look easy, are straighforward, good directions, but for some damned reason they don't work for me. Then I'm stuck in a situation where I have to wing it, but I don't have the necessary knowledge to wing it and if I wing it wrong I could screw everything up. I ordered the scan, and it asked for the files, so I put in the CD. It took about 45 minutes (!!) to transfer them. Shortly after they started, a big blue windows window popped up asking what I wanted to do. I didn't know...didn't expect that. I chose 'perform a task' or something, went to the second page and thought no...this isn't what I want, so I exited the window. When the files finished, I again typed in the command, and it again asked for the files! So I came back here and started writing a post. Then it occurred to me that maybe I needed to remove the CD, so I left this site and tried that. Nope, still wants files transferred. And it let me exit the cmd screen, but the window asking about the files wouldn't go away - kept saying are you sure? You might have to insert the CD later. I kept saying yes. Even a ctrl, alt, del wouldn't get rid of them. So I came back here to finish the post, with the window in the middle of the screen cuz it wouldn't go under this window. Finally finished my post, clicked on 'add reply', and it took forever and when the screen finally changed, I got a 'page cannot be displayed'. I tried to back up, but my post was gone. So I left, restarted the computer, and here I am. I'm sorry I didn't answer your message, I've never used them and didn't see a "respond" button. sonsie

i'll be back in a few...too freaklin frustrated

Hiya krit86lr, Sounds like a plan. No, I'm not in any hurry as long as it's still running. I don't know what an sfc /scannow is, but you gave clear directions so I won't worry about it. Just a heads-up...there's another post after yours, and I was seeing if this forum site was different and would allow me to reply right after yours, but before the next one, so I clicked on the "add reply" that was attached to your post. Nope, it won't allow that, but it did bring your post up as if I'd written it, and I suspect I could have edited it or anything else. Didn't know if anyone would want to know. ok, will answer the next post, then try that scan. LOL yeah...I love that sig line, too! I can just picture a bunch of chubby little cells hanging out partying, bragging, daring and double-daring... and before you know it, someone dares someone else to become John Doe and *pooof* - earth has a new human! I'll let you know how the scan turns out. sonsie

Fix-It is a utilities program from Ontrack that performs chkdsk, defrag, disk snapshot, registry cleaner, fixer, editor & defrag, diagnostics, system monitor and explorer, crash-proof, virus scanner, several data recovery programs, and several other tasks of that sort. I only use a handful of them. (Not a bad little piece of software, btw, and I think I only paid $15 for it.) Have to confess - I've never run a chkdsk /r and don't know what it is. I'm guessing the "r" isn't for 'repair' because it seems that would be the same as 'fix'. The problem is that the computer refuses to do a chkdsk. However, somone on another forum suggested I use the recovery console and gave me a link to webtree.ca which gives instructions. I chose not to do that at that time, and today decided I would, but wanted to see about the registry situation first. It makes me nervous to mess around in unknown (to me) areas - always afraid I'll mess something up, and even worse, that I won't be able to get back online for help. Think it's safe? Have to access it in that area between a reboot and Windows. I had similar thoughts about not restoring any registry items - it would probably just confuse the issues. The problems started March 6th, and I can almost pinpoint the time because in my post to another forum I mentioned that they'd started 3 hours earlier. Course, the actual causing event may have occurred hours or even the day before. I thought of doing a system restore a day or two after the problems started, but when I accessed it, it was turned off. I also thought about using my Norton GoBack, but it was inexplicably empty. I'm using Windows XP - sp2 Security: Ad-Aware, MS Antispyware, ewido anti-malware, Norton Antivirus, and Kerio Personal Firewall. The first thing I did was a full scan using each program, as well as a couple of online scans. Came out clean, which I figured would happen. I'd rather have a bug. Just now when I was looking for a log, I found a loose file in Local Settings > Application Data. The type of file is "Configuration Settings" and there's not much info. The name is a bunch of capital letters, dashes and numbers, and under "view" it shows "Root Entry", followed by lots of capital letters that don't spell anything, with lots of rows of "y"s, also. That's followed by another grouping that looks the same, then towards the bottom there's small letters and symbols, along with the abbreviations "auds" and "vids" and rows of "y"s. That's followed by another grouping that's very similar, if not identical. The "created" date is Feb 23 and the "modified" date is Mar 3. Another application someone linked me to was Lavalys Everest Home Edition - a diagnostics program. I ran it again either this morning or yesterday, but can't find it. Will keep looking. EDIT: ok, ran another scan with Everest. I sure hope that if there's a problem that they spell it out like: ERROR, or YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH... because there's no way I could figure it out in amongst 1-2MB of data that it spits out. So - assuming they spell it out, then I have no problems with computer, motherboard, display, multimedia, storage, network, directX, devices or benchmark testing of memory. oh, one thing I'm unsure of, at the end it had a small section titled "DEBUG - VIDEO BIOS", and then one more line titled "DEBUG - UNKNOWN", and then under it: Monitor EMC0309: Plug and Play Monitor [NoDB]. Does that mean there's a problem? That would make some sense based on an error I got on the first day this all started: "Warning - Event Source: PlugPlayManager The service "CiSvc" vetoed a target device change request. sonsie

Unfortunately, lots of things, but I don't know what they have in common or are directing me to. In November I had many of the same problems - after several days of a tech working on it in the shop that built it/sold it to me, and trying everything down to loading a different OS, the conclusion was they didn't know what was causing the problems, they'd tested everything testable, but that it might be a motherboard going out since the probs were sporadic, and also because twice I got a screen saying something about loading netbios defaults. Most of the time, the computer didn't produce the same problems in the shop that they did at home. So I bought a new computer...this one! ?kerio personal firewall ? GUI cannot connect to service? (only sporadically and only tvguide. Never had a problem before) Computer won?t perform a check disk on C. Get a popup saying ?Windows was unable to complete the disk check.? When I tried to run one with Fix-It, it ran, but said I needed to run a chkdsk with F (which windows wouldn't do). I tried again today and it said "Unable to access disk" System has performed 2 dumps of 535MB each within 1 day (about a week ago) Fix-It has a diagnostics which I tried and a couple of areas passed, but when I got to motherboard and memory tests, the computer crashed immediately and each time I got a screen that said "Driver_IRQL_not less_or_equal" and some other things like - if this is the first time you've seen this screen, then reboot. If you've seen it before...I don't remember, something about netbios. Tried to run Fix-It diagnostics yesterday and got lots of errors which didn't show up except in the app event log system error log errors: Delayed Write Failed (LOTS of these for several days, now - a couple times a day Warning - Event Source: PlugPlayManager The service "CiSvc" vetoed a target device change request file system structure on disk is corrupt and unusable; please run chkdsk (but it won't run one) Error code 000000d1, parameter1 c0300000, parameter2 000000ff, parameter3 00000000, parameter4 19a91096 The server {72C2714F...} did not register with DCOM within the required timeout. application event log errors: can't unload registry files content scan could not be completed on C (getting this one at regular intervals) Needless to say, I'm not a happy camper. Bought this computer in mid-December and kept an old HD which went out in mid-January, so I replaced it, so I now have a HD 3 mos old and one 2 mos old. Is it possible that there's a problem with configuration (on 2 separate computers) that's causing HDs or motherboards to be going bad quickly (if that's what's happening)? The actual day-to-day functioning - opening documents, being online, etc. - is, in general, ok. Also, is it worth putting back the registry items that I've deleted since Mar 6 and risk muddying the waters? sonsie

I run an issues scan for the registry every couple of days and always save to file before 'fixing' (which always ends up to be deleting). Several questions: 1. What types of problems would I see if there's a registry problem? I know there's no definitive answer - I'm just looking for a general overview. 2. There would be nothing 'bad' in putting some of those registry items back, correct? 3. I'm using Windows XP, so to do the above, I would go to the folder where they're located, rt click on the batch/date I'm interested in, and click on "merge" at the top of the drop down list, is this correct? I've never done this and registry stuff makes me nervous, so forgive me if this is a 'well duuuhhh' question. 4. This is pretty much the last thing I'm trying before either taking the computer in to the shop or wiping and reinstalling Windows. Is it appropriate? too stupid for words? something in between? sonsie