some odd computer problems

[DavidP]

So I have been having some odd computer problems, and thus far have failed to diagnose the exact cause of them. Lets see if any of yall can help me out.

Here are the symptoms:

Symptom A: About every 2 or 3 days I get a message on my computer that reads something like "VPtray.exe has tried to read such-an-such spot in memory had has failed and must close." I then must press okay and allow the program to close. For those of you who are wondering, VPtray.exe is part of the Symantec Antivirus program and is more specifically the little program that is resident in the Windows system tray.

Now, many of you are saying, "So what....some program fails and you have to close it, who cares", but that is not the end of it. Once VPtray fails, everything fails. My computer is literally stopped dead in its tracks. I cannot run a single executable file. All network communication is down. There is no communication over the USB ports (my USB mouse fails to work, but I can still use my laptop touch pad). I can't even press CTRL-ALT-DEL to get some system diagnostics up....it just gives me an error message and fails to open.

In short, every 2 to 3 days when I get this error message about my Symantec Antivirus going down, I have to do a cold hard shutdown and then restart my computer. I can't even do a normal restart. I literally have to hold in the power button because nothing will work.

Symptom B: Rougly once every 1 or 2 weeks it seems that my network interfaces completely go down and I get no network communication at all unless I reboot. It just happened to me a few minutes ago, actually, which is what spawned me to write this post.

I was surfing the web when suddenly I noticed a slow-down in speed. Then 1 minute later all network connections were lost. No HTTP. No SSH. No FTP. Nothing. I tried disabling and re-enabling all my network stuff, but to no avail. I had to reboot.

I didn't have to do a cold, hard reboot like I have to do for symptom A, but I still had to reboot. Once I rebooted, everything now works as normal. This happens once every 1 or 2 weeks.

So...

What do you think could be wrong?

I am running Windows XP Media Center Edition as my OS. I have never had such problems with any XP installation before. The network problem (symptom B) has been going on for a couple of months, and the all-system-failure problem (symptom A) has been going on for about 3 weeks now.

I suspected a virus, but when I scan my computer I find nothing (using Symantec Antivirus, AdAware, and Spybot). Everything seems clean.

Any suggestions? Has anyone ever had similar symptoms?

[maxorator]

Well, VPtray clearly hooked some parts related to process creation and redirected them to itself. So if VPtray crashes and those hooks are not unloaded then bad things happen, as you can see.

Not sure what caused VPtray to crash, though...

[Elysia]

Why not get rid of Symantec and try some other security solution? If it works, you'll be much happier seeing as Symantec is really poor these days.
Figuring out why something crashes is usually a difficult thing... For one thing, you could try to attach a debugger and see if it crashes in the executable or in some other component and if it's related to symantec. And then you could contact support.

But the best solution, IMHO, is to get rid of norton once and for all.

[maxorator]

Elysia, if someone has bought some quite expensive piece of software, he ain't gonna buy a different one just because you think it's crap.

You could always try to reinstall it.

[Elysia]

I forgot to mention a reinstall. And it isn't my opinion of the whole - Symantec's products are known to be resource hungry and ineffective.
And I don't think anyone mentioned where David got it. Anyway, I also did suggest trying a another security solution because they tend to be better.

Now, don't take it seriously, because no one is obliged to heed the suggestion or do what it suggested.

[lightatdawn]

I'd have to side with Elysia here. I'd uninstall Symantecs software, and install something like AVG (http://free.grisoft.com). Wait 2 weeks. If your problems are gone, you've found the source. If something else begins to crash, you're back to step 1.

I suppose you could attempt a clean install of Symantec initially. If you're paying good money for it then its a shame to waste it, but my opinions on the software parallel Elysias.

[DavidP]

The only reason I have Symantec is because it is freely available to all students at my school for no charge. So that's why I have it.

I will give AVG a try.

[Elysia]

I don't know much about freeware AV, but I don't know if AVG is any good since it missed a great amount of wild viruses. Although this was in 98, and it's an entirely different world now, so I don't know.
But if you want to try, NOD32 is the best AV on the market right now (proven through statistics). http://www.eset.com/products/compare-NOD32-vs-competition.php
This test was done in 2007, so it should be more up-to-date. However, it also shows that AVG falls pretty far down the list, worse than Symantec: http://www.eset.com/products/compare_heuristic_detection.php
Although again, not unexpected, Microsoft scores last place or not at all. And it clearly shows NOD32 is the best right now, too.
Just giving you some more info and advice.

[Mario F.]

I'd suggest not reading into "statistics" when these are being provided by the company that is trying to push their own product.

[Forgotten]

nod32 2.5 was good.The new nod32 3.0 is crap.I have nod32 2.5 on my computer but they dont release full updates for 2.5 now.
I don't know why but nod32 3.0 doubles the flow of data on the net(if i download 2mb than nod download 2 mb by him self)

[Elysia]

I'd suggest not reading into "statistics" when these are being provided by the company that is trying to push their own product.

That's true, but I would imagine any company trying to promote their own product if it's as good as they say. Take it with a grain of salt, but it was the virus bulletin that made the tests, so I would say the tests are fair enough.

[JFonseka]

Symantec is rubbish, go for something like avast

[DavidP]

Okay I have fully uninstalled Symantec. I am going to let my computer run for about a week with no antivirus program installed and see how it fares.

Then I will try doing a reinstall. I'll let yall know how it goes.

[DavidP]

Well it has been a little while now. After uninstalling Symantec, "Symptom A" has disappeared and does not occur anymore. So I think we can safely say that Symantec was doing something bad there.

"Symptom B", however, still exists. It actually just happened to me again, which is what spurred me write this.

I cannot figure out what is causing symptom B, but the it almost seems like a buffer overflow attack or something.

I tried running Putty after symptom B showed up a few minutes ago, and it gave me an error saying, "Cannot create connection - no buffer space available"

When symptom B occurs, if I try to visit a web page in a web browser, simply nothing will happen. I won't get a timeout error...I wont get any responses at all....when I press enter to go to a URL the web browser simply just does nothing - and that is for IE, Firefox, and Safari. All three.

Any ideas?

[maxorator]

Windows XP Media Center is known to be more problematic than XP Professional. I have heard many people having problems with it. You could of course troubleshoot at Microsoft's site and see what they tell you, but I doubt that's gonna help, since these problems are difficult to reproduce.

Check if there are any network-related hotfixes for your XP.