Something's seriously wrong with my computer: Volumes 1 and 2

Alright, here are my issues. First one is that all of a sudden, my computer is unable to decode Windows Media video properly-- I can hear sound, but the video is either green, or a series of still blocks. I've tried all I could find, reinstalling and uninstalling and wiping Windows Media Player and all associated codecs off and reinstalling, but the problem still persists. How can I get Windows Media to play properly?

And issue 2: my computer has begun randomly restarting itself. I don't know why, I haven't made any changes to my computer at all, and it just began doing this. Are there any known issues to cause random restarting? And to make matters worse, my System Restore (I have Windows XP Home) deleted all my restore points from April, leaving me with nothing to work with, so how can I prevent that from happening?

Windows XP Home
512 MB SD RAM
1.69 GHz Pentium 4
80 GB Hard Drive
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro 128 MB Graphics Card

No idea.

Oh well!

😛

Well to get Windows Media Player playing again try downloading DivX if you don't already have it that might solve a few problems. And with your PC restarting it might be because of sever lack of space.

Maybe you caught that new virus, the Sasser virus... it supposedly makes the computer randomly restart along with other minor glitches...

Sasser virus... care to elaborate? That might be it... 😬

well this will not help your case but I seem to have some serious Spyware/Adware issues going on......Im thinking when I downloaded hundreds of photoshop demos I may have messed up then..but recently a Virus managed to get on my comp.

its called Trojan horse and Im pretty sure its why ive had this barrage of spyware. what should i do? should i buy a new kind of firewall?

Originally posted by JKozzy
Sasser virus... care to elaborate? That might be it... 😬

There's a huge article on it here, http://www9.sbs.com.au/theworldnews/region.php?id=84244&region=3 .

I think there's a patch for it on this page here, http://www.winnetmag.com/Article/ArticleID/42308/Windows_42308.html

But I think the new Sasser just came out a few days ago.But I dunno.

the latest Sasser out there that I know of is variant D, Solo.

and yes, Sasser does restart your PC.
If you are sure you have the virus, use an up-to-date virusscanner to remove it, or in the case of not having it yet, check this thread out about securing yourself from the virus:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-011.mspx

run AdAware, do a virus scan, use DivX player

DIVX player can't play .wma and .wmv files 😖

And I ran a tool to get rid of it, but it says I don't have it, perhaps it's a different strain of the virus... 😬

And at home, KMC doesn't work either. I keep getting a Page Cannot be Displayed--- how can I get KMC to work on the computers if it won't work on either computer? 😖

First of all, get an anti-virus program: http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

Then go to: http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ and make sure you have all the critical updates.

Thirdly go here: http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?page=download
Download the spyware remover and run it.

And finally, to stop ALL worms dead in their track and to make yourself instantly immunable, install the built-in firewall: http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/windowsxp/firewall.asp

OR get a very good (free) firewall here: http://soho.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm

Thank you Raz 😄

I think it's all working now...