XP spawning multiple processes 2

[homeric]

Hi
My Pentium III 800 is running XP Pro - It ran well for a month then I moved it into another room having got a wireless router - It ran well till I plugged in a USB hub while it was running - It then crashed & soon after it would run for a while then start spawning copy after copy of the 'Help And Support Center' screen

Shutting down manually, causes it to run chkdsk & it finds a lot of crosslinked files, which it turns into 'File00xs' (hundreds of them each time)

I reinstalled XP and it seemed to fix the problem for a while, then this morning the 'Help And Support Center' screen started spawning multiple copies of itself again & reported that CPU usage was 100% - If I get into IE it wants to give me multiple IE help screens!

I have up to date AVG7 Plus Firewall running on it and it's run & updated every night (as is SpywareNuker)

Anyone got any ideas what's going on & what the solution might be please?

 

[bcastner]

Your "F1" function key is stuck or broken.

 

[stduc]

To prove bcaster is right - & I am pretty sure he is, boot up and remove the keyboard connection as soon as you can. That is after you have logged in - if you need to. See if the behaviour stops. You should be able to use your mouse to close all the help screens, run a chkdsk (via the menus or right click on the drive and select properties then tools.
You should be able to shut down just using your mouse.

If any fluid has gotten into the keyboard - your in trouble - best replace it.

If its just dirt & crumbs & pins ( I have found the wife's sewing needle in my keyboard LOL ) then turn it upside down & over a clean surface give it a damn good spanking! (A clean surface so you can see how disgusting it was) Then using a soft brush on a vacuum hose - give a good going over.

 

[homeric]

Thanks bcastner & stduc you diagnosed the problem in one! The only variable I changed when I moved the PC to its new site, was to attach a 'new' keyboard (a multimedia one I got cheap!) - What I'm left with now I've changed back to the old keyboard is a sort of working PC, but with a much damaged registry (from having to down the PC with the power switch) - The multiple spawning caused the CPU utilisation to rapidly hit 100% & seize everything up! - Thanks again for your help, I'll now address the registry issue - regards homeric

 

[stduc]

What you need to do now is fix any errors on the hard drives before you do anything else.

I would recommend spinrite from grc.com - but if you don't fancy paying for it then chkdsk will do I suppose. But not from the GUI - must be run in command line mode on C

use the command

chkdsk c: /f /v /x

Say Y to schedule at re-boot

the resultant report after report is in the event log.

Do this for all drives - but you can use the GUI interface in system tools for the other drives.


Then perhaps going back to a restore point would be the quickest & safest way of repairing your registry?

 

[bcastner]

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=307545

The above in plain english:

http://www.digitalwebcast.com/2002/03_mar/tutorials/cw_boot_toot.htm

 

[maxthedork]

SpinRite is not very expensive at all (I believe it's about $80), but it is worth ten times as much. I'm a big advocate and user of freeware but SpinRite is something I consider worth paying for. That and Zero Assumption Recovery ($120) make for a very well-rounded and HIGHLY EFFECTIVE hard drive toolkit.