the vynsane asylum

No idea what's going on. Well, I have an idea. I'm just hoping it's not right.

Occasionally, if the computer goes to sleep, shortly after waking up, the entire screen will turn to gobbledygook. And everything will freeze. I have to turn the computer off to get around this. And it's happening more frequently lately (I don't think it came up at all until a couple of months ago).

I'm not sure what to look for online, since there's no error message, just the crash.

I suspect it's a bad sector on the hard drive. I don't think I've downloaded any virus, and a scan finds nothing. But does anyone know anything else I should look into (aside from backing up a lot of stuff and getting a new one)?

I'm running Windows Vista. I think it's Professional. They make it impossible to check.

that could easily be a video card problem, possibly due to overheating. when's the last time you opened the case and cleaned it out with a can of compressed air? how old is the machine, and is the video incorporated into the motherboard or is it an additional card? if it's on-board, i'd recommend getting a video card anyway. if it's already on a card, swapping it out isn't all that big a deal. if you have a video card AND on-board video that you're not using, try plugging into the on-board port and see if you get the same results. if so, then it's something else.

Would the video card cause the entire system to freeze? In any case, I'll open it up and give it a look. I'm not incapable of opening it and tinkering, but prefer to avoid it if possible.

well, it's hard to tell if everything is truly frozen if the screen is messed up. the computer could actually be fine - it's just your view of it on the monitor that's interrupted. if this is the case, when you move the mouse, it won't display on the monitor, but the computer could still be tracking its motion. think of it this way: you can still record TV programs on a VCR without owning a TV. it's just a lot harder to click on a file or type an email without a monitor - or a messed up video card.

that said, yes, it could cause a system lock-up - especially if the video is on-board.

Gotcha. I'm pretty sure it is locking up when it does that, since I know the sequence of keys to shut down, and that didn't work at all. An extensive disc scan finds no problems (surprisingly enough), and there appears to be no virus or malware.

I'd considered overheating as a possibility, especially given that it only does this after it's gone to sleep and woken up.

Just because that's what your mom tells you whenever you're missing her gaping hole with your tiny little rod, that does not make it the appropriate response to everything, NB.

Okay, it's worse.

I blew out the dust about the time of my last post, and it seemed to work just fine. Today, the hard drive (or something thereabouts) started making a clicking noise and it locked up. Then it shut down.

And now it's really fucked up.

It tries to go into Startup Repair, which can't fix the problem. I was able, with some effort, to decipher the error message and see it's a corrupted registry.

I've tried restoring earlier points, and it always says it can't do it, and that it's missing a file, which it identifies by a long number (I've written it down but haven't brought it into the room to the computer I'm using now).

I was able to pull up a command prompt, and right now it's running a full-on chkdsk routine. Which should be done in about an hour or so, I guess. For Startup Repair failure, everyone says to run a system restore... which isn't working. For system restore failure, it says to download a program--which obviously can't happen on a system that won't frickin' start.

I don't really have the money to drop on a new hard drive, but I'm guessing I have no choice. I should theoretically, worst case scenario, be able to re-install Windows on a new drive (I have the installation CD) and then access the info on the original drive to copy it, correct?

Man, when shit breaks, everything breaks.

Nothing is working. The scan found two whole bad... somethings. Too tired to remember. Out of something like 30,000,000. They're cordoned off, but the computer still won't start.

It won't restore to an earlier point. It won't do anything via Startup Repair. And the fucking installation CD's "Repair" function just leads to Startup Repair.

There appears to be no hardware issue aside from the bad sections of the hard drive. Which I can replace, but it looks like I have to reinstall Windows.

Stupid question: I can access a command prompt (if I'm patient and sit through the fucking futile attempts at repair). I should be able to use old school DOS commands to copy my files to an external hard drive, correct?

hey, sorry i missed these posts.

i've never really fiddled around with DOS - if it's an XP machine, though, yeah - i think you should be able to do that. i think vista was the first that did away with DOS as the underlying OS, any command prompt is just emulation.

how old is the computer? does it make sense to buy a new hard drive for it, or just buy a new computer and put the old hard drive in an enclosure, making it an external? that's the real question at this point.

it sounds like a hardware issue caused the registry errors, though, if the hard drive made noises. hard to tell, though.

Caligula, I.T. Guy is a SNL sketch Jm J. Bullock did when he was on the show.

Hmmm.... No handy-dandy, all-purpose error thread. I'll just hijack this one.

Been having a problem lately. Mr browser seems to occasionally want to redirect to a fraudulent survey page or, worse, a fake browser update page that actually fucking downloads (but, thank God, doesn't install) a file called "install.exe." I'm running the latest version of Chrome (despite what the fake pages tell me) on Windows Vista. My wife has the same issue every so often, on her Mac running Safari (not sure of the OS or browser version).

I have run virus scans, malware scans, and every other type of scan I know of. Nothing shows up. I'm pretty careful what sites I visit (and Mrs A is even more careful), and would never download and run anything from an unfamiliar source, so, if it's something we picked up, I have no idea where it would've come from. It mostly happens on swagbucks.com's main page, but I had it happen once on one of the Transformer Wikias (there are two, and I forget which one).

All I can find on the internet are people as baffled as I am, asking what's going on and getting no answers (or at least no useful answers) in return. The closest to a real answer, which sounds plausible to me, is someone suggesting it could be coding embedded in an ad that's redirecting the entire page to some fraudulent bullshit whenever that ad loads.

Any of you heard of this, or know how to stop it, or maybe know of some arcane magical way I can check my computer beyond what I've done so far?

BTW, I just went to Swagbucks' main page, and the timing on their large right-hand ad loading is consistent with the time it's taken to initiate the redirect in the past.

No issues with the fake surveys for a while, but here's a new one. Very minor, but, still. I can't find any results searching for it, so I can't help but wonder if Google has buried mention of this error.

Occasionally, particularly when switching from tab to tab in Chrome, the Chrome window essentially becomes transparent, and I'm looking at the window underneath. If I scroll, it fixes itself. Also, sometimes when I click on a link in a tab, switch to another tab, and come back to the first tab, I'll briefly see the page I was on before going to the page where I clicked the link.

Minor annoyances, but anyone else have these issues or know how to fix them?