are you checking Taskmanger to make sure the programs are actually killed?
i am curious about the notice that you posted about Ccleaner's registry cleaner: would you think, if i had used it in bits like you advised only a couple of times that firefox itself would have become corrupted? could it be that i get the error message saying that firefox is already running and to close it before opening another occurrence of it might have been caused by using registry cleaner? if so, how would i know that? YES, I DO make a backup copy before i clean...
i would not guess that there's much to clean in the registry because i had to reinstall windows back in october 2009 thank you to MS, IE8 (! others: do not use IE8--you don't know how much work must be done on it and what, with windows 7 just out, i wonder how long it will take for the software crews with MS to fix it !)--because, either it was IE8 or else it was part of IE8, which specifically is Windows Live (? can't remember the entire name, i removed it ?), which, per checking with MS a few months ago, is a problem to many users.
why did i have to reinstall windows? because, per above, mcafee antivirus discovered TWO, not one, of the same Trojan Horse inside of two, not one, separate paths of my C:\ drive on June 6, 2009. The date that the TH came into both of those paths was June 3. that tells me that it has 3 days to send its plague-ridden soldiers onto my C:\ drive! this TH is called "Exploit-ObscuredHTML". i actually believe it got in via IE8 (which of course i removed, reverting back to IE7, the default) because mcafee said it did when it showed me the two paths; however, i think it got in as the result of entering my user criteria into windows live, which i did so i could read advice on the MS forums and ask questions.
what was the result of this TH? interesting, but terrible too: suddenly, while i had my picture folder open, beginning with the letter for the folders [marked, named] *i* like in investments, pictures were disappearing in front of my eyes! in a long, long, long process (since i am still trying to recover lost photos that may or may not still reside on one of a few external hard drives that are norton 12 ghosted image files) as of 01-10-10!!! and something about it ate up music files too, which i am still recovering... and...
on october 6, 2009, windows had become corrupted, which meant that mirrored images of my hard drive had to be corrupted also! so, i evaluated Trojan Remover, which i eventually purchased because it really is GOOD! and yes, trojan remover DID in fact find a couple of little buggers which we killed. but still, why would windows have many orphans in the registry if i reinstalled it on or about october 6?
am i using recuva now? yes, i am. i am using it at this moment to find lost or deleted photos on my C:\ drive, which i had to BUY. (i had to buy another 2 TB hard drive... grrrrr!).
here is what i am afraid of and maybe ya all can help, since i feel like i have been inside of the wind of a cyclone since june 3 (and my business needs these photos):
i am afraid of attaching all of my external hard drives onto the computer, since one of them, my first, the smallest but the one which most likely holds OLD photos, has software that uses a different algorithm than does norton ghost 12, which resides on my C:\ drive and all of the other drives than one. if i attach all of them, there would be quite a conflict, no?
it seems to me that one answer to this dilemma would be to remove the progam norton ghost 12 temporarily, just to use the external hard drive which is only a file backup drive to recover photos and possibly some music files.
what are your thoughts about this?
and here is the other WORRY: what exists right now are paths within paths. for instance, from mirrored images, the folder known as "My Documents" contains at least two of the same name. if i open one, i can see where pictures SHOULD be, but they are not there, because i MOVED them into "My Pictures" folder on my new internal hard drive.
of note: if ever you buy an external hard drive, make sure that you check the specifications of the INTERNAL hard drive that you want to mirror image. why? because, if you are using, for instance, a SATA hard drive that is configured as a RAID 0, you will want to format your external hard drive into the SAME CONFIGURATION.
part of the tearing out of the hair is a result of my computer manufacturer NOT investigating my then RAID 0 configuration! if that had been done, first, i would have bought TWO internal 1 TB hard drives to go into the RAID 0 SATA configuration, not a 2TB internal hard drive to *match* (it didn't, at first) the INTERNAL configuration!
AND THAT IS VERY IMPORTANT TO KNOW, AND TO REMEMBER, IF YOU WANT TO KEEP A MIRRORED IMAGE OF YOUR HARD DRIVE!!!
but windows getting corrupted was not a result of that. i just wanted to give that info to ya all.
so, any of ya all got any suggestions for me, as to why, when i have firefox closed as a browser, and i want to call it up as a browser today, Ccleaner has a tracing record of it, which then triggers a windows error telling me that i must first close firefox???
YIKES! if i didn't get born with bad luck, real bad luck, i wouldn't have no luck at all! THANK YOU ALL!!!