err, well, i have a myriad of problems with my computer atm and im not entirely sure where to begin
i spose the first symptom of something being wrong was possibly a month ago where a cmd box would flash up showing "program too big to fit in memory" (then disappearing immediately, too quickly to have read the error without repeating it over and over) seemingly randomly during a program's normal running..
at first it didnt affect usage significantly - it was just an occasional annoyance
more recently though, the volume shadow copy service stopped working, showing the regular appcrash 'check online for a solution'/'close' dialog boxes which would recur until reboot (would then start ~5mins after bootup) regardless of whatever actions i took to remove the error message ..
clicking 'check for a solution' / 'close' / the red 'X' / shutting down the process in the applications tab of task manager / ending the werfault.exe & wermgr.exe processes in the processes tab of taskmanager
ive resorted to just leaving the error minimised in my taskbar where it wont keep recurring and being annoying
it isnt just limited to the volume shadow copy service though - the error i currently have open is for the microsoft windows search protocol host having stopped working
this problem is easy to just ignore, but numerous rundll32 errors show regularly, 'bad image' errors which refer to numerous different files (a notable amount relating to msnmgr.exe which an advanced uninstall with an uptodate revo uninstaller, reboot then reinstall did not fix)
quite early on (upto 6months ago), acer orbicam stopped working but the camera remained visible by msn messenger but ~1-2months ago the camera stopped working altogether and in the last few weeks the built-in microphone and speakers stopped being recognised by msn at all (audio output has remained otherwise perfect)
it is only today when i reinstalled the Realtek HD Audio Manager that the built in microphone begun to feed sound to the speakers when i blew into it (same with a mic with a line in)
a fresh install (i dont know how fresh it was - it remembered my username/password and auto-login status) of msn messenger did not let it re-recognise any audio input
windows media player (~2 weeks ago) begun to crash after ~30 seconds of being open
when accessing certain folders in the open/save dialog, explorer.exe would crash and would need restarting (withOUT reboot) though i do not remember any specifics about this, there was nothing noteable as far as i knew about the folders
whenever i right click on an explorer window / open save dialog for the first time, a rundll32 dos window would popup then disappear indicating an illegal operation error...
when i repeated this just in the iexplore saveas dialog, i noticed for the first time, an ntvdm.exe (i think) dos window showing first, and the illegal operation referenced it...
there was one time when comodo caught the attempt to run rundll32 with no information what program invoked it, i blocked it and the error did not occur.. this has not been repeated since
i havent comprehensively tested it, but i cannot access anything in the control panel past the directory listing due to cmd oppoing up and telling me "program too big to fit in memory" and nothing appears to load past this..
i cannot run cmd.exe for this same reason nor can i pass instructions to it via the run dialog
ive strongly considered a clean install, but i simply dont have enough external storage to backup my data to make it feasible.. on my internal hdd, i have ~15gb free spread accross 5 partitions + unknown amount in my dual boot (MEPIS) linux partition since im running windows at the moment
this is after ive spent all of today uninstalling ~50 programs and researching various fixes, but somewhere along the line my default font or something has cause 90% of the text on my screen to become italics ..
other than this, there's likely to be a huge number of other symptoms that ive missed out of this message but i think that the error is centralised around the fact that i cannot access cmd.exe
an online kaspersky scan is running in another IE window as i type (current duration: +1hour, scan progress: 29%), a pre-kaspersky HJT log will be posted shortly, as will further details about my computer setup
thanks
