The mindless rantings of a filmaholic.
Sick Sick Puppies
Published on February 15, 2004 By Phantom of the Night In Windows XP
Well I haven't been on in a while because of 2 reasons. 1. I've been going outside. Thursday night I went out with Shane, and Friday and Saturday night, I spent with Tink. 2. My computer is being a total asshole. I went on a downloading spree on wednesday, trying to get every shockwave game i could get my hands on. I also decided to download two programs, called Shadow Dancers, and mp3 dancer. mp3 dancer was terrible. Just some girl dancing in a circle, but Shadow Dancers was pretty cool. It was a screen saver right out of the 60's. Truly Psychadelic.

I restarted the computer for some reason, and found that all hell was breaking loose. There were at least 20 different things concerning the computer's normal behaviour. I solved most of them, but was scared shitless, when my screen went blue and a window pops up saying "RPC My Doom Virus Detected." I noticed that the window was from Internet Explorer, not Norton, and after I did some research, found that it was only an ad. That's sick.

My computer has returned to normal with the exception of 4 problems. There are also some weird things that happen. For instance, every time I go onto microsoft.com, a window opens to zestyfind.com. I've never been there and it's never happened before. I don't understand. My four problems are:

  1. It takes a little longer to log in from the welcome page.
  2. Every time i click on one of the items on the taskbar, it takes a second or two, to acknowledge my click. This goes for the Start button, and it's contents. Normally, if the computer's being taxed, the window will highlight instantly, and the window will open shortly.
  3. The biggest pain in the ass, is that I cannot open windows media player because my wmp.dll file has a version number of 9.0.0.2980 when it should be 9.0.0.3075, and that it was not installed properly. Then why have I been able to use it everyday until now?
  4. Also, everytime I try to open windows media player by double clicking a file, i can no longer click on anything on the desktop. This has been most upsetting with my morning Spiderman cartoon, to accompany my cereal. It's a miracle that I installed Realplayer last week for no apparent reason.


If anyone has any advice, please tell me. My cereal has lost it's special ceremonial value and has become nothing more than a simple breakfast food.

Comments (Page 1)
2 Pages1 2 
on Feb 15, 2004
Do you have Ad-Aware? Link That might fix your problem with the zestyfind.com window. Also, I'd run Disk Cleanup and Windows Update too, And install Windows Media Player again as well. Link
on Feb 15, 2004
All you need to do is do a system restore to restore your computer to a time before thursday when the problems started. Below is a step by step guide to this.

1) Click on the start button and go to control panel
2) Click on performance and maintenance
3) Click on system restore in the top left hand corner
4) Select restore my computer to an earlier time then click next
5) Select a date before thursday then click on next

Hope this solves your problems

Regards

Sir Peter Maxwell
on Feb 15, 2004
Sounds like you may have downloaded some spyware and it is slowig your system and playing its spyware games. Go here and try one or two of the programs, see what it finds:

http://download.com.com/3120-20-0.html?qt=spyware&tg=dl-2001&search=+Go%2521+

None are free, but I know Spykiller will at least show you what is where and you can remove it yourself.

Good luck.

on Feb 15, 2004
Spykiller just don't work. Use Ad-aware.
on Feb 16, 2004
Thanks XX, have not tried Ad-aware, will in the future.
on Feb 17, 2004
I know what problem you have!!! I'm an IT dude who just spent a ton of time fighting
this issue...

First of all you do need to get a good spyware scanner...try http://www.lavasoft.de
and download ad-aware...just make sure you use its "Update" function before running
it or it won't do much good. You probably have more than just this one and an updated
ad-aware or spybot should knock them out.

That said, here's a quick way to fix your logon delay...

Open up regedit.exe and find THIS folder. Navigate to it by clicking the +'s to expand
things like you would in Windows explorer:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\Guardian


Right click over "Guardian" in the left pane.
Left click on "Permissions"
Left click "SYSTEM" once to highlight it.
Check "deny" in all boxes that you can at the bottom (Probably only 2)
Left click Apply
Left Click OK

Say "OK" to any warnings about permissions
**Reboot** the system

You will then have removed the logon delay.

Then, once you are logged back on, if you can, delete

C:\Windows\System32\msg117.dll
C:\Windows\System32\msg118.dll
C:\Windows\System32\msguard.dll

if you have any of these at all. You might even have msg116 or some other number.
Delete any of those files if you can. It will probably let you delete them. If it doesn't,
you'll probably need to boot to a command prompt and delete them manually.
To do that, choose f8 when your pc first boots, choose command prompt and then:

cd\windows\system32
del msguard.dll
del msg118.dll

That should take them out..

No worries...

Just remember to get a spyware checker to kill the other ones you probably have.

Should at least solve most of your problems with zestyfind and the logon delay...

Hope it helps,

Down with Shrub and peace out...
on Feb 20, 2004
I have no answer to your computer problems, but I hope you get it fixed soon, because I miss your posts. Hope it all works out.
on Mar 01, 2004
Many, many thanks my friend
You got the best solution (even better than symantec's)
on Mar 07, 2004
HippyTech,
Thanks for the advice. ZestyFind is now gone.

Anon
on Mar 07, 2004
THAnnnnk YOU


after tring many things that was the one tip what helped
on Mar 09, 2004
Thanks for the info most helpful.
I am not into computing jargon real well,but I offer this experiance ,
Whilst failing to be able to delete msg118.llwhilst in dos mode i was able to get INTO it thru the edit option.,PLEASE NOTE I DISCONNECTED INTERNET PRIOR TO THIS.
For those who know print, it out and hopefully understand this clever intrusion{just as well its not much more than an annoyance}.
Whilst in edit I deleted some "things" and typed in just what I thought of it.saved file, rebooted and, then was able to delete file in normal way.
I ran adware and registry vac and rebooted again.
The file has gone {still 24hrs later}
THE RAPE OF MY COMPUTER IS OVER ,but the war has just begun i fear.
on Mar 10, 2004
Thanks soooo much for the instructions on removing msg118.dll.... that FU$@ING crappy spyware. WOOOO HOOO it is GONE!!!!
on Mar 20, 2004
Now can anybody tell me how to remove msg121.dll?
on Mar 24, 2004
You can go here:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
to get an auto-removal tool for this infection. I don't think the tool is up to 121 yet, though. What I always do to remove these things manually is boot from the XP CD (or boot disk for previous versions) and hit 'r' at the first screen where it's waiting for you to do something. Then you can navigate to the file and rename it. Please note that some of the msg*.* files do belong to Windows, but anything in the 100 range is bad (is, 115, 116, 120, etc.) To remove all this stuff I usually run Spybot Search and Destroy, Adaware, CWShredder and Kill2Me. Then check all Hosts files on the computer (I use HostsFileReader for that) and finally run HijackThis. Most or all these tools can be found on the page I listed or on:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/
in the downloads section. HijackThis should ONLY be used by or with the help of an expert. It lists EVERYTHING, good and bad. There are also some excellent forums on Spywareinfo.com and the people there are very helpful, so long as you don't ask them to explain themselves and just accept their word as offered. That shouldn't be a problem. They reall know what they're doing.
on Mar 24, 2004
For your problem no. 3, you can try the method found here:
http://www.updatexp.com/wmpdll.html
or Run this command in your Start menu:

c:\windows\inf\unregmp2.exe\UpdateWMP
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