Dell Fail to Initialize

Hello, and Happy Easter!

Problem with my new Dell PC - Win XP, SP2, Intel Celeron CPU 3.53 GHz, 512 MB RAM. I installed Bitdefender AV, MS AntiSpyware, and Sygate firewall. Not sure if this is malware, but PC "stalled" while surfing TE's today PC stopped responding - Task Manager indicated low % use, and RAM tracking stated plenty of RAM available. Attempts to shutdown using START-SHUTDOWN, and SHUTDOWN from Task Manager screen were unresponsive. Tried to turn power off at PC, and not responsive. Had to literally pull the plug to turn machine off for restart.

Upon restart, got these error messages:

"acstart16.exe failed to initialize properly (0xc0000005). Click OK to terminate application"

and

"SMax4PNP MFC Application has encountered a problem and needs to close"

When attempted to open Mozilla Firefox, Firefox screen came on momentarily, then got error message "Mozilla encountered a problem and has to close. Sorry for the inconvenience..etc."

Downloaded SpyBot, started in SAFE mode and ran. Got one spyware, which I fixed. Ran Bitdefender online per the forum guidelines, and it found no virus.

Not sure what the two files in error messages referenced above go to.

Please offer any suggestions for further troubleshooting.

Thanks,

Bob

r

 

The Smax4pnp mfc has to do with Soundmax and is actually smax4pnp.exe, which should be located in C:\Program Files\Analog Devices\SoundMAX\. This is a software issue, not anything to do with XP, but a part of the OEM software for drivers added into their version of XP.

Also, noted by doing a search, some malware can mask as smax4pnp.exe, so it is a possibility that this is a malware issue.

 

Thanks, Brownizs -

I will specifically check the file you mentioned.

Any idea what the "acstart16.exe" has to do with?

Thanks,

Bob

 

acstart16.exe is related to AutoCAD/AutoDesk. If you do not have either, then I would go back through the Malware steps to make sure that this system is clean.