Monday, January 26, 2004		Dr Tribune

Q I have an Intel Celeron 1.7 GHz with ASUS P4 BGL 845 motherboard, DDR RAM, 128 MB, Samsung 60 GB HDD (2 primary & 4 extended partitions) and have only Win ‘98 in C: I am facing three problems:

(1) The program gives explorer error with a message that reads: "This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down." (2) It automatically restarts some times. (3) It gives fatal error with blue screen that reads: "A fatal exception 0E has occurred at 0167:BFF88396."

A This is a memory related problem and indicates there is some problem with the RAM. You need to check RAM by replacing the RAM with another one check out if this error occurs. If the error does not occur, then you can blame it on RAM. However in other cases this error message can also occur if Quickbooks, Powerbuilder, Cabinetware, or Oracle for Windows 95 is installed on your computer. In your case, I think the problem is due to faulty RAM.

Q I have a Celeron, 733 MHz, Azza 810 DTC motherboard based system running Window ME. I have some video songs in hard disk and use window media player 9.0 for playing these songs. My problem is when I try to plays songs, the picture comes in black-and-white mode. This happens even on playing VCDs. I can’t understand what is the reason behind this. I have checked all settings under player but couldn’t find a solution. Earlier there was no problem. Please help.

A Please check the display driver of your system, as it appears to have been corrupted. You may need to reload the display driver to correct this problem. You can change this setting either by choosing display from Control Panel or by clicking right mouse button on any blank space on your desktop screen and then choose properties from the drop down menu. Now select settings and choose advanced. Click on Adapter and then reload the driver. I hope this will solve your problem.

Q I have an assembled PC with Pentium III 933 MHz processor, 128 MB RAM, Mercury 810e motherboard, Motorola SM56 56 KBPS internal modem. The operating system being used by me is Windows 2000. The problem I have been facing is whenever I connect to the Internet the following message is displayed "svchost.exe has generated an error and will be closed by windows. You will need to restart the program. A error log has been created." When I click on the "OK" tab displayed under this message, neither am I able to disconnect the Net connection and nor can I see the status of my usage of the Internet. And in order to disconnect, I need to remove the connection of the telephone lines from the computer but this automatically restarts my computer. I have already tried to run two anti-virus software i.e. AVG and Norton but it shows no virus on my PC.

A This error may not necessarily mean a virus present in your system nowadays as the virus responsible for this error message has become inert. However, this error now suggest that your system is not equipped with the necessary security patch, which is required to cover some security hole. Please download the necessary patch from the Microsoft’s Website and plug the hole to get rid of this problem. This error shows your computer is vulnerable to security threat and needs immediate attention. Nevertheless, you should get your system fully scanned for any possible virus threat online either at Mcafee.com or trendmicro.com in order to rule out any possibility of virus threat on your PC.

Q I have P-4, 2.4 Ghz, 850 E genuine Intel motherboard with 40 GB (7200 rpm) Samsung HDD, 32 MB SIS AGP Card with other common components. My problem is: 1. I have just upgraded my OS from Win ‘98 SE to Win XP Pro. My old OS works fine, but in Win XP Pro, while working (mainly) online or offline, a massage appears in red box that states: This computer is shutting down. This shutdown was initiated by NT authority/system. You must restart the computer because the Remote Call Procedure (RPC) service was terminated unexpectedly. 2. When I open Coreldraw (11) with other 2-3 programs, my system gets very slow.

A Your problem is similar to the one mentioned above and related to security patch not present on your system. This error was originally caused by MSBlaster worm in computers, which had security hole. However, security patch from Microsoft solves this problem and also covers the system vulnerability. Also check out for the presence of nasty viruses like MSBlaster or SoBig on your system by clean-booting the system and then scanning it by an anti-virus scanner or online on the sites mentioned above. If your system discovers virus then you can also download the virus removal tool from www.mcafee.com or www.symantec .com to eliminate the virus from your system. Regarding the problem of slowing down of system, I would suggest that you increase RAM in your system (256 MB Minimum) as Windows XP gives below average performance on 128 MB. You can also increase the size of the paging file size to improve the performance of your PC.

Q My computer configuration is: P III, 500 MHz, `B7 Intel 810E chipset motherboard `B7 2 hard disks of Samsung 40 GB and Seagate 40 GB with 256 MB RAM.

Samsung has 3 partitions and Seagate also has 3 partitions. Both HDDs (Samsung and Seagate) are bootable. I can boot the system from both HDDs. On both HDDs, Windows XP Professional is installed. My problems are as follows:

1) When I boot my system from Seagate HDD, the system does not show the partitions of Samsung. But the ‘Device Manager’ is showing both HDDs. And under Computer Management > Disk Management it shows both HDDs (Seagate & Samsung). The Disk Management is showing Samsung 38 GB as primary partition of 38 GB as against Samsung that has 3 partitions.

2) When I boot my system from Samsung, the system shows all partitions of Seagate and Samsung. In this case, the system shows three partitions of Seagate and three of Samsung. It is showing a total of six partitions that is correct.

Moreover, when I boot using a bootable floppy and run FDisk on Samsung, it shows only one partition of 38 GB, which is wrong because I have 3 partitions on Samsung. I don’t want to format any of my HDD. Please help me to solve the problem.

A I think this problem is because you have NTFS file system on Seagate hard disk and FAT 32 file system on Samsung hard disk. This seems to be the root cause of the problem. A practical solution is to make Samsung as your primary master and you can use Seagate hard disk as secondary master. Else you can put Seagate hard disk on a separate PC and use it over network.

Q I have Zenith P4 Celron 1.7Ghz system with 40GB HDD (C: 20 GB, D: 20 GB partitions), 128MB SD RAM, motherboard P4VMM2. My problem is my system shows 64 MB RAM in System Information in Windows and 137 MB RAM at startup. My second problem is my scandisk is taking six to seven hours to complete this process. Sir, I have done everything to solve these problems with the help given in Log In Tribune but all in vain. I have even re-installed Windows to sort out the problem but this also doesn’t help.

A Regarding your first query, please make sure if it reads two chips of 64 MB or something like this. If it says so, then it would mean the same thing as 128 MB of RAM. Regarding your next problem that the system is showing 137 MB Ram at startup, I would suggest you to load default settings in your BIOS Feature setup, which I hope would solve your problem. Regarding your second problem, I would suggest that you log on to Windows in Safe mode and then try running scan disk. Also make sure that anti-virus, screensaver and other programs, which run in background are not running. You can check this out by Pressing Alt +Ctrl +Del only once and by checking the programs and then processes. I hope this will solve your problem.

Q I have a PC with the following configuration: AMD Athlon 600 MHz, Freetech M/B P7F200A2 RAM 128+64 MB, HDD 60+15 GB CD ROM Sony + LG-R/W, TNT 32 MB Video card, ALS 4000 Sound card, Pixelview TV card My problem is whenever I start my computer, I get a blue screen error message: "If this is the first time you see this message restart the computer. If this message reappears check disk space, changing video adapters, or BIOS updates." Since last two years, it was working well and to protect from ‘Blaster.’ I have already installed the patch, but since last 5-6 days, I am facing this problem. I have tried installation of all versions of Windows OS (Win 98, 2000, XP), but the same problem persists. Please solve my problem.

A First of all check the computer for boot sector virus on your system. This can be done by online checking your system at Mcafee.com or Trendmicro.com or clean boot your system with a clean and virus-free floppy and then scan it through a virus scanner. If this error is being caused by any virus, then it would be eliminated through this process. However, if you do not find any virus on your system, just load default settings in the BIOS feature setup and this will solve your problem.

Q My PC configuration is Celeron 1.0 MHz, 128 MB, 40 GB (5 partitions C & D 4 GB each, E, F, G remaining space). When I bought my PC, there were three partitions and Win 98 installed in C: I made two more partitions after a month (5 partitions described above) and tried to install Win XP on D: but during installation an error occurred and it prevented the installation of Win XP. That error message was "An error has occurred and it prevents the installation to prevent the computer from getting damaged." Technically error message was "0*801B1470, 0*00000002, 0*00000001, 0*804f6CCC, 0*0000000A.". "IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL." After formatting C:, I again installed Win ‘98 and then tried XP but again this message appeared. After this I tried three more times and at the end got both OS installed. After nearly one year, my Win ‘98 got corrupt and I had to format my C: and again installed Win ‘98 and Win XP but when I tried to install XP again that message appeared and prevented the installation. I have tried a couple of times to install XP but in vain. Also my HDD has developed bad sectors (247,576 bytes) as it showed after thorough scan but now after reinstallation of Win ‘98, it shows 0 bytes in bad sectors (after thorough scan). Where have these bad sectors gone? Have these been removed? If not, how can I remove them. (My HDD is of Samsung).

A The problem could occur if there is incompatible hardware or an incompatible device driver on your computer. To solve this problem, when your computer starts Windows ‘98, uninstall anti-virus software and boot manager software, and then clean boot the computer. After your computer starts in the clean boot environment, try installing Windows XP again. If this procedure fails, then you may blame it as hardware problem, which could also be due to the bad sectors. However to solve this problem, remove any unnecessary hardware from the computer. Disconnect any USB devices and printers, and remove the network adapter, sound card, serial adapter etc. If you continue to receive this error message, you may need to flash the BIOS on computer’s motherboard. Refer to the manufacturer of your computer or the Website of the motherboard for information about how to do this. Regarding your problem related to bad sectors, it is possible that installation of Windows have fixed it. But it is most likely to come up again. Check it out with your hardware dealer. If the hard disk is under warranty, you may get it changed.

For all your computer-related problems contact Dr Tribune at drtribune@tribuneindia.com