Help

B B

bluestew

Well-Known Member
Joined
5 Mar 2009
Messages
427
Location
Irlam
please can someone help me with my pc !!!

Just moved house and when i reset up my pc yesterday it's not been working right.

I,ve got a Acer pc, with Vista on it and since i set it up yesterday the clock is running very fast on it and my mouse will not double click on any of the icons... think i may have i virus!!!

Anybody got any ideas?

thanks in advance.
 
Hi Mate,

Bit more info please.

How is the clock running fast, do you mean where the pc displays the current time?
Is the pc a laptop? If so plug in a USB mouse and try to double click items.
Go into control panel and check the mouse settings, for double click etc.
 
It's a pc!!

we tried the mouse settings, made no differance.

It's also changed the colour of the tool bar i.e from blue to white. The clock in the bottom right of the screen is fast but when you bring up the clock on screen the second hand is moving round very quickly. we have only had the pc for about 4 months and it was working fine when we took it out last week to move.

We have norton on it, but that will not work on it now, we uninstalled it and put it back on again yesterday, but it will not run properly now.
 
thanks for the info,

click the Windows start button > then type in system restore. From the search results choose system restore then follow the prompts to restore your pc to an earlier time when you know it was working fine. Once you do that and if it seems to be working as normal you can check for virus or spyware afterwards.

post back and let me know how it goes.

*system restore in Vista only shows you the last five days, there is a tick box you can check that will let you view restore points older than that if you need to go back further.
 
Hi, Stew's wife here, wanted to give a bit more detail of whats actually going on in case anyone can help us.

The PC (an Acer Aspire) seems to be counting time very fast, it is counting a minute every 2 seconds. Therefore when you double click the mouse it thinks you aren't clicking fast enough. it counts the 12 minutes for the screen saver to kick in, in about 5 seconds and stand by mode in about 10! and all flashing internet ads appear very quickly too. It had also took all the colour themes away and had stopped showing thumbnails when hovering on the toolbar, but I did a system restore and got these bits back, but I cannot sort out the clock.

I don't honestly think we have a virus as there are no signs of anything installing since at least ten days before we moved and there was nothing wrong then?
 
Unusual pc problems often send me on a google search just so I can learn a bit more and this wierd little problem intrigued me,

anyway back to my 'findings' : several pc geek forums suggest motherboard battery may be on its way out, but also time syncing with an on line server may be an issue see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-discussion-support/1207-my-clock-running-too-fast.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-di ... -fast.html</a> for more.

However you may have a JAVA problem <a class="postlink" href="http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/system-clock-running-fast/168102.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.computing.net/answers/window ... 68102.html</a> suggests that adjusting your java applet runtime settings. According to the users on this forum the game POGO sends the system clock a bit loopy. Have you been playing any java based games?

I'd be tempted to uninstall and reinstall java and see if that sorts it out.

I had a java problem on my vista laptop a while back that was causing web pages with adverts to crash my browser and the only solution was to reboot. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled java and not had a problem since.
 
anyway back to my 'findings' : several pc geek forums suggest motherboard battery may be on its way out, but also time syncing with an on line server may be an issue see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-di" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-di</a> ... -fast.html for more.
Click to expand...

If the CMOS battery (the one on the motherboard that regulates among other things the time and date of your system when turned off, and remembers the system configuration as well) were on the way out it wouldn't speed up. The PC would give you a warning when you boot up that the BIOS settings were out (or words to that effect) and then you would constantly have to reset the time and date when you get to Windows as this would revert to something like 01 01 99 0000hrs

If you can get system restore to get the pc behaving normally then I'll give you some advice to check for virus or spyware. If you've tried that post back and let me know.
 
goatfood said:
Unusual pc problems often send me on a google search just so I can learn a bit more and this wierd little problem intrigued me,

anyway back to my 'findings' : several pc geek forums suggest motherboard battery may be on its way out, but also time syncing with an on line server may be an issue see <a class="postlink" href="http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-discussion-support/1207-my-clock-running-too-fast.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.driverheaven.net/hardware-di ... -fast.html</a> for more.

However you may have a JAVA problem <a class="postlink" href="http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-xp/system-clock-running-fast/168102.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.computing.net/answers/window ... 68102.html</a> suggests that adjusting your java applet runtime settings. According to the users on this forum the game POGO sends the system clock a bit loopy. Have you been playing any java based games?

I'd be tempted to uninstall and reinstall java and see if that sorts it out.

I had a java problem on my vista laptop a while back that was causing web pages with adverts to crash my browser and the only solution was to reboot. Then I uninstalled and reinstalled java and not had a problem since.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the effort! I've been trawling google and looking to the geeks too. I have been into the set up screens and tried the clock in CMOS. That is running at normal time and normal speed. So we were headed the motherboard way too. As for games, we simply don't play them, there are loads of games pre loaded on the PC but we never play any of them, just don't have time!
I called the PC World helpline last night and after 45 minutes and two engineers they were stumped too. When I suggested the motherboard, they said possible but not necessarily. They suggested a factory reset but that was what we wanted to avoid if poss...
 
It's not hardware, so replacing the motherboard wont help. Reinstallation will certainly do the trick, but that leaves you with a machine back to factory condition and you will have to setup all your applications and software again, including the internet.
 
auction294 said:
It's not hardware, so replacing the motherboard wont help. Reinstallation will certainly do the trick, but that leaves you with a machine back to factory condition and you will have to setup all your applications and software again, including the internet.
Click to expand...

To say so certainly its not hardware... could you quote "its not a virus"? or do you think it might be?
 
If the CMOS battery (the one on the motherboard that regulates among other things the time and date of your system when turned off, and remembers the system configuration as well) were on the way out it wouldn't speed up. The PC would give you a warning when you boot up that the BIOS settings were out (or words to that effect) and then you would constantly have to reset the time and date when you get to Windows as this would revert to something like 01 01 99 0000hrs
Click to expand...
you've confirmed this
I have been into the set up screens and tried the clock in CMOS. That is running at normal time and normal speed.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
..so it's definately not hardware related. That leaves software. If Norton is no longer working then it is probably virus or spyware related. PC World are a joke, they're answer to everything is reinstall and the 45minutes on the phone probably cost you a fortune. A reinstall will certainly do the trick but...
but that leaves you with a machine back to factory condition and you will have to setup all your applications and software again, including the internet.
.
Click to expand...

If it is virus related;

download combo fix and save the file to your desktop > <a class="postlink" href="http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/sUBs/ComboFix.exe" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/sUBs/ComboFix.exe</a>

Download Spybot search and destroy > <a class="postlink" href="http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html</a>

Restart the computer in safe mode > press F8 when booting, choose Safe Mode with Networking

Then run combo fix (just follow the prompts, accept the agreement but you don't need to look for updates or install the Windows Recovery Console). Takes around 10 minutes to run and produce a log.

After that run spybot . Allow spybot to fix whatever it finds if anything.
Once those are done reboot, if the pc starts to play nicely again download AVG Free Edition > <a class="postlink" href="http://www.free.grisoft.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.free.grisoft.com</a>
Then run AVG (full scan). Once AVG has done it's thing, uninstall it as you shouldn't have 2 AV programs at the same time due to conflicts, compatibility and system performance.

Last thing > download HiJack This > <a class="postlink" href="http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-HijackThis/3000-8022_4-10227353.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://download.cnet.com/Trend-Micro-Hi ... 27353.html</a>
run the program, copy and past the results into notepad and past them here. I'll look at the log. Last things then are emptying temp files and folders, and purging the restore cache. I'll go over that after the machine is working okay again.
 
Thanks so much for the reply, had a day away yesterday so hadn't seen your post, but, I've printed what you wrote to start going through it.

However... I decided to copy all our photos etc to disc so that we had copies in case I ended up having to do the restore in the end anyway (Just to cover myself!). Anyway somehow part of what I did cause a restart on the pc... everything has come back on, completely normal! I haven't got a clue on this earth what I did or how I did it but everything is back to normal!?

I think I'll still work through what you said and see if there is anything there anyway, but I've baffled myself!
 
bluestew said:
Hi, Stew's wife here, wanted to give a bit more detail of whats actually going on in case anyone can help us.

The PC (an Acer Aspire) seems to be counting time very fast, it is counting a minute every 2 seconds. Therefore when you double click the mouse it thinks you aren't clicking fast enough. it counts the 12 minutes for the screen saver to kick in, in about 5 seconds and stand by mode in about 10! and all flashing internet ads appear very quickly too. It had also took all the colour themes away and had stopped showing thumbnails when hovering on the toolbar, but I did a system restore and got these bits back, but I cannot sort out the clock.

I don't honestly think we have a virus as there are no signs of anything installing since at least ten days before we moved and there was nothing wrong then?
Click to expand...
It sounds like some kind of "time warp" . Did we make 7th ????
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Unread Posts

Don't have an account? Register now and see fewer ads!

SIGN UP
Back
Top