ntvdm.exe

Discussion in 'Software' started by dlb, Apr 19, 2008.

  1. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    Dell Latitude D610, WinXP Pro SP2. Here's some background: the keyboard had been absolutely DESTROYED by a two-year-old. About half of the keys were missing. So I installed a new keyboard and booted into Windows. The PCs owner told me that it was running slow. It did load a bit slow, but I've seen worse. Anyway, the desktop loads up and once it did the PC was very, very slow with a constant hour glass and hard drive activity LED. I was able to end some processes with the task manager, turn off just about everything in msconfig, and I rebooted. It was running alot better, but still too slow, and would not connect to the internet. So I ran the McAfee removal tool (McAfee was expired and erroring out anyway) and rebooted. Now the PC is running OK. Not great, but WAY better than it was. Now opening My Computer takes maybe 5-7 seconds, versus 20-30s and over a minute when I first booted up. So I was making progress. Still no internet connection: a quick TCP/IP & Winsock fix and now the internet is working. (and here we go) BUT.... I get the Windows error "Glonk!" at least once a minute, sometimes 2 or 3 of 'em with 5 or 10 seconds between each one, and it's an NTVDM.EXE error, but no error dialog box is open on the desktop, and NTVDM.EXE is listed in the task manager like 50 times or more. Some research tells me that this is a network/internet error related to Novell or NetWare or something. The MSKB has lots of info for WinNT but not XP.....
    H E L P ! ! !

    Oh yeah- I tried booting in safe mode but it doesn't make it to the desktop, it spontaneously reboots. Here's the error I get:
    "ntvdm.exe - Application Error. The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000142). Click on OK to terminate the application." It just now came up in a diaglog box so I could read the error message; normally it just glonks! with no error box....
     
  2. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    Upon close inspection, it appears that there are two ntvdm.exe files on the laptop: one is truly named ntvdm.exe and the other is named ntvdm .exe... Notice the space in the 2nd one after the "m" and before the ".exe".... it also seems that the one with the space is erroring at twice the rate of the one without the space...
     
  3. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    More research tells me that it's a virtual machine/SQL server thingy... the PC does indeed have SQL server on it (provided by a 3rd party), so I'm uninstalling it now.....we'll see what happens.
     
  4. joelsz

    joelsz First Sergeant

    I'm following this thread with interest, but so far have nothing to add.
     
  5. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    Well, it seems that uninstalling the 3rd party SQL server helped a little bit; I had no ntvdm.exe errors at all until about 30 seconds ago, and suddenly have had about 5! :( I did manage to install a spyware remover and it's scanning now (67 items found so far!). I have fixed the internet connectivity issue, and the date was set five days ahead (it was saying it was the 24th of April :confused) and I fixed that which actually seems to have helped more than you'd think. In addtion to the numerous ntvdm.exe listings in the task manager, there is also something called dexplorer.exe which is obviously malware. I killed the process using the PID and then kept an eye on the task manager; when dexplorer.exe appeared again it was acommpanied with an IE window trying to connect to a site called "adclicker.savenow.somethingorother" so this is most definitely at least partially related to malware.

    I don't think I need any help at this point now that I have spent a bit of time on it. So unless someone has some great insight (besides "format and reload" ;) ) I'll think I'll figure it out. But I will continue with the play-by-play for a little while for those of you that give a :crap....


    EDIT- spyware scan is up to 134 items found! I had to disable the wifi to stop the ad pages from opening.... make that 148 malware items found!

    EDIT2- spyware scan has been running for 13m 20s and found 281... 283 items...

    EDIT3- spyware scan just hit 21m and has found 386 items.... wait.... it just jumped up to 391....
     
  6. dlb

    dlb MajorGeek

    Spyware scan has just completed..... 474 items found and removed by SUPERantispyware.

    And on that note... have a great weekend everyone!
     
  7. plodr

    plodr Major Geek Super Extraordinaire

    Sounds good. 474 isn't too bad. I'll bet there wasn't any security on the computer.
    On a computer of one of my friends (a senior citizen who does juno email and browses Coldwater Creek) she had something like 361 malwares just from one - 15 minute browse on juno dialup one Sunday afternoon!

    I did not know she switched from juno free to juno dialup. I quickly cleaned it up put on a few security programs and she has been good to go for a few years.
     

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