Pages require refresh or reclicking of links

Okay. My first post here.

There may be a few members her who recognize my somewhat “unique” screen name from my other forum participation for flying, or for HVAC. Now, I am coming to this forum to see if I can avoid a disc reformat. More on my Dell customer service experience earlier this evening, at the end.

I have a Dimension 5150 running Xp Home Sp 3, with 2 gigs of ram. I bought it new on ebay in 2004. On the whole, it has been a good, not great machine. My previous machine had only a 7-hundred something speed processor, so when I bought this 3.0 mhz machine, I was expecting a HUGE increase in performance. To be honest, I found myself somewhat disappointed. My ISP is a Verizon 1.5 meg DSL line. Yes, it was better, but not up to the hype of the new family of processors.

With the pleasantries over, here is the deal. A few weeks ago, I picked up a Hyloti.Y infection, which AVG told me about during a daily scan, and which I removed.

Since that experience, I have had a curious problem, with both my DSL and using my Blackberry on a tether, and also using both IE and Firefox. After an initial bootup, I can open a browser and everything is great. If I am on a forum webpage, for example, and I click on a link to a post, the page will immediately start the loading process, and stop dead, right there, with perhaps one or two green squares on the progress bar at the bottom of the page. Sometimes a return to the post link and repeated clicking helps, sometimes just repeatedly refreshing the page helps. Sometimes, 99% of the page is loaded, but some things have still not loaded, and the progress bar shows all green squares. After a day or so of this, I knew I was in deep stuff.

I started by googling a few phrases like “pages need refresh to load” and similar things. I found some info, such as how to scan and repair the dll files using the cmd prompt, and rebuilding the winsock catalog. I’m not an IT pro, but I was writing in Fortran in 1968.

Today, I was installing a autodial temp alarm in a server room, and asked the supervisor what he would do in this circumstance. He said I should just blow off the time spent and go for the reformat, which is the same thing my local geek at Best Buy had told me on Sunday.

Now, the BB guy said I could just call Dell and get a disc for the machine for $25. Somehow, the price has doubled, so it may be back to ebay to get a disc at a more reasonable price for a six year old machine. I gave all my info twice, to two different people, and then I was supposed to be forwarded to tech support, and the system told me they couldn’t connect me and it dropped my call. Oh, the callback number I gave them? No call. Very nice. More American jobs gone overseas.

Of course, my Mac friends are having a good time at my expense. Yeah, I know, this never happens with a Mac. Yadda, yadda.

I found Majorgeeks in one of my Google searches, and the thread was the Malware thread. I read and performed all of the steps, except Combofix would not download. I also ran hyjackthis to see what was running. I found nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. I didn’t post logs in the forum because I was without the combofix log, and I realize some folks can have a bit of an attitude when you don’t follow all their steps to the letter.

The bottom line: if your machine was doing this, would your time be best spent taking some further action that I have not described (or found in my searches) or would you just back up everything, get the CD, and reformat the drive?

Because of aps on the drive (like Office, for which I don’t have the discs) I’d really like to avoid having to wipe and reinstall, and have to pay even more money for the Office discs, so I don’t lose my email files. It’s a shame that Open Office has not come out with an Outlook-compatible product.

So, gurus of MajorGeeks, how can I fix this? All helpful advice is welcome.
:confused


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this is a interesting set of circumstances. so you followed all the malware steps but combofix wouldn't download? little more detail on that please. what did it do specifically?

second: have you tried re-installing firefox? how about downloading and installing opera? and what IE are you using, 7 or 8?

from the sounds of it this is a minor thing, not the system tearing stuff that is best handled by a nuke&pave. if it does come down to a nuke&pave there are tons of apps here for backing up and restoring data.

 

For combofix: the window (what's that called, the command prompt window? I forget) would open and would state "contacting server" or something to that effect. I could leave it that way for a loooong time and not get any change. I tried the sequence a couple of times, too.

As far as browsers, I have upgraded firefox to the latest version, which still has a nasty habit of remaining open in the background after closing, so I can't re-open it without stopping the process in task manager.

At first, I thought this might have been an IE 6 issue, so I saved my favorites, uninstalled IE 6, and used firefox to download IE 8. No change in behavior. On a whim, after reading so many complaints about IE8, I decided to save favorites again and uninstalled 8 and installed IE7. Still had the same problem.

I have never tried Opera or Chrome.

When the problem was made clear as being common to BOTH IE and Firefox, I knew it was not a browser-specific issue.

Since the pages load normally when first opened after a boot, I suspect some kind of a value or size issue is happening, but not being a trained MS guy is holding me back from further diagnosis.

The server room guy told me that he thought I might have a problem with registry key permissions. I didn't even know that registry keys had "permissions." Apparently that is not the same thing as a registry "value." He also said there could be thousands of registry keys!!!!


Has anyone seen this before?


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I would start a thread in the malware forum with just this explanation. You clearly had/have an infection and they will likely get combofix to work for you too. If not, they will give you other tools/scans to run to get to the bottom of the problem.

The only "attitude" I've ever detected there is a bit of impatience when people either don't follow directions or when they are posting their issues in multiple forums, following multiple lines of advice.

I think you will really find them to be professional, helpful, and free!! :wave:wave

 

well brandypeppy beat me to it, so i'll just second the suggestion. only other possibility is if you recently installed software that could affect your internet capability: antivirus, networking software, or if you did scans while checking for malware and 'fixed' something. either way yes you have registry issues and DON'T try to fix em with out help

best of luck!!

 

Two things I want you to check:
how much RAM? (I'll bet you only have 256MB; Dell tends to install the lowest amount the computer will function on)
When you fire it up, look closely at the black screen at the top. Does it say PCRestore? If so, you already have a restore partition on your hard drive that can be used to take the computer back to the factory condition - you DO NOT need to spend $$ on a restore disk.

Caution: if you go the PCRestore route, you lose all the windows updates and patches and every program you have installed since you bought the computer, as well as all your documents, emails, pictures, music...
Before you restore, get an external hard drive so you can copy the files you want for safe keeping. All the programs will need to be re-installed.

 

2 GB of ram. I installed it because it seemed that the machine was getting slower over the past several months. Then, after the virus removal, the registry scans by Mechanic and Malwarebytes took care of the registry keys, at least, that's what I thought. Then, the server guy told me about registry permissions, and now I am not sure what's up.

No PC Restore on bootup.

And, I can no longer contact the seller from Sept 2004.

I imagine that the suggestion is to begin a new thread in the Malware section?

 

yes make a malware thread. you've either still got malware or you've got an incomplete removal that's eaten your registry. windows rot is terrible. might wanna start with the mass backups just in case.

 

With 2GB of RAM, that should not cause the slowdowns you see.

Sorry you do not have PCRestore. I was hoping to save you some money.

 

Well, I thought I had gotten rid of the malware issue, but I started a thread in Malware and I have been posting the logs as requested.

In fact, I just posted what I think is the last log that was asked for.

Trouble is, the pages are loading just as slow as before I ran all this nifty new utilities that I had never heard of. I can only hope they did some good on some level, but the performance is still pretty bad.

So, since this is the "software forum, let me ask:

If I am complete in the Malware forum, and I still have the same issues, what is my next step, aside from going out and getting an external hard drive?

Is there some sort of utility that will look at and repair things like registry permissions, since that is what my server room contact had mentioned?

Also, there is another thread you might want to look at in the Malware section, where it appears that someone else if having the same problem that I am.

Is this a known issue?



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registry cleaners exist, but they are kinda notorious for hurtin ya as often as they help. most pros consider em a bad idea outright, i've used em with success so that's a judgment call. if ya do use one, make sure its reputable and has a backup option cause the registry is kinda like brain surgery. how much data you have? you can always back up to DVDs or large flashdrives if ya gotta. lots cheaper than external HDs.

just for grins go into command prompt and run a release and renew. never know, i've seen it fix things it shouldn't have and this could be network related since its not browser specific.

in command prompt type: 'ipconfig /release' (no quotes) hit enter then 'ipconfig /renew' (no quotes) and enter

 

of course no matter what you should wait till the Fighters in Malware give ya a clean bill of health before proceeding good luck!!

 

try opening task manager (ctrl+shift+esc) and click the networking tab, then open your browser and repeat the process. look for any massive spikes in communication. you should see a big spike on each page load, the odd behavior you should look for is a spike that caps and stays there instead dropping back off fairly quickly. do you have any issues downloading? the combofix incident you mentioned was the program hanging while trying to update its self or check for updates.

do these symptoms persist in safe mode?

 

I eventually got Combofix to load and run, and I don't know what the problem had been. I will try to monitor as you suggested to see what happens.

 

See my final post in Malware. Removing AVG was a great step, along with the scanning and various cleaning utilities.

Thanks to all. I will have to spend more time here. There is much for this grasshopper to learn. :wave