My computer is having some serious problems...please help!

There are three things that I can see are wrong with my computer. The first and probably most important is that sometimes when I boot up my computer it says "3rd Master Hard Disk S.M.A.R.T., Status BAD press F1 to continue". So I press F1 and it opens to my desktop no problems. Then while I'm surfing the web my internet explorer just errors out and shuts down. And finally when I go into my start menu and move my mouse out onto the desktop my taskbar, start menu and any open folders freeze but I can still open things from the desktop but when they open I can't use them either. I have XP Pro and was recently infested with Cool Web Search spyware but was able to get rid of that from what I can tell. I also have McAfee, Spybot S&D, Adaware, and HijackThis. Please help me obiwon your my only hope.

 

Sounds like it's trying to detect S.M.A.R.T. on a drive that doesn't have it, which could account for the other two problems. Have you checked for a later version of IE? A freeware browser, like Green Browser, might be useful until IE works again. It's very similar to IE, so it shouldn't take much time to adapt. As for the freezing, check task manager, and see what's running in the back ground.

Got a firewall? If not, I recommend Zone Alarms. I use the free one, but...

 

hmm i apoligize, but i must disagree with triaxx
it sounds like your hard disk might be dying
does your computer make any weird noises when it starts to freeze?
could you by any chance give us some more detailed specs?
thanks!

 

My computer doesn't make any noises when it freezes.
What kind of specs would you like and where would I find them? I know I have a Pentium 4 3.0gig processor, 1024mb RAM lots of hard disk space and a Radeon X800 graphics card. As for the task manager there are over 50 processes running including multiple rundll32.exe and svchost.exe (This doesn't seem right to me). I don't currently have a firewall though I'm running through a router. Does a firewall slow down pings during online gaming? Thank you guys for taking the time to respond to my problems.

 

my firewall used to ping during gaming but i set it not to now. hmm you seem to have new hardware so there shouldn't be any problems there. if you close all the applications in task manager that are being run by you, i.e. all the processes have your name or username next to them, close the, and then see how it goes.

 

My start menu no longer freezes
I went through and ended all processes under my name and it worked. So then I systematically went through until I found the one program that did it. It was in my System32 folder and had taken the name ati3duag.exe so that problem is solved thank you all very much for your help. I also haven't had the error about 3rd Master Hard Drive tonight at all so that's promising. Unfortunately my internet has quit on me once. I think i'll try to find an old IE or try one of the free ones for the time being. Again thank you all and if you have any ideas of why my IE is messing up don't be afraid to jot it down. Thanks.

 

Those multiple Svchosts, are viruses. I've been hit by them time and again. Getting rid of those should help your IE problems.

 

Try using Mozilla Firefox, not only is it free and easy to use, there's far less spyware and it's a faster browser, but you're entitled to your own opinion of course!

 

what else should i use to get rid of my svchosts? Like I said before I have adaware, spybot, and mcafee. I have run them all under safe mode and reg mode many times and they are all updated with the latest info. What else should I use? Thanks

 

I use the freeware Antivir personal edition. It nailed them first try.

 

multiple svchosts are NOT abnormal. Yes, they can be hooked to viruses, but they are also legitimate. You have to find out what app is running under the host in order to determine if there is a virus running.

Your hard drive is bad.. replace it.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314056

INTRODUCTION
This article describes Svchost.exe and its functions. Svchost.exe is a generic host process name for services that run from dynamic-link libraries (DLLs).