Flood of error messages

Invicta

New Member
Hi,

I'm a Vista & PC newbie, as well as a newbie to this forum. Sorry in advance for such a long post.

I have a Sony Vaio NG31S, with Vista Home Premium & Service Pack 1. When my free Norton trial expired, I read reviews and bought Shield Deluxe, which seems to work well except for regularly saying that a mal-ware scan has not been carried out for (e.g.) 40 days when one has actually just been carried out.

Now the PC has gone crazy, with a constant barrage of Windows error messages piling up faster than I can delete them. Meanwhile, programmes won't load.

At first, the normal desktop was visible, I was able to set up an Administrator account and thanks to this forum try some possible solutions, such as 'restore' - but none have worked.

I had recently added updates from Apple for iTunes & Quicktime and suspected they may have conflicts, so I un-installed them - no change.

The most common error message is: 'Windows Problem Reporting has stopped working', but there are many others, such as 'Task Scheduler Engine' and many more landing on top of each other and all saying that various features have stopped working. These include System Restore, so I can't follow recommendations to carry out a restore.

I shut down last night and went to have another go tonight - this time, after signing in as Administrator again, I can only get a black screen with the Windows error messages coming thick & fast.

The Vaio came with Vista pre-loaded and no support disks. I've only just learned that I should have created a recovery disk as soon as I got the machine, the instructions for that were in the Recovery Guide booklet and with a brand new computer I thought I had nothing to recover - my fault!

Has anyone experienced this before? Thanks for any advice that may help.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio
You can contact Sony and order the disks for a fee.

I would run Hard Drive Diags and Windows Memeory Diag

Also, I would get rid of and a refund (personal opinion) of Shield Deluxe.
I have seen this in the past, and I think it was the root cause of issues. But uncertain as it was a long time ago.

You should find out what manufacturer HDD you have and run those (ie: Western Digital, Seagate, Maxtor etc. [Toshiba Drives do not have diags available at all])

When you run the mem diag, after it starts hit "t" on the keyboard to run the advanced diags and let them run for no less than 4 to 6 hours.
 

My Computer

Hi Invicta,

If you check the manual , there will probably be an option to use the F8, or some other F key just as the machine is starting ( white writing on black screen ) - before Widows loads and you attempt to log on.

That would take you to the manufacturers recovery options screen.

There will probably bbe an option to return the machine to it's factory state - i.e. as you got it.

Hope it helps.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
Many thanks for such quick replies, Tepid and SIW2. I'll take on board the point about Shield Deluxe(!) and will look into getting disks from Sony. I'm into safe mode with command prompt at the moment, but the command I picked up elsewhere in this forum, %systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe is returning 'not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file' so I guess I've done something wrong - it's my first time trying stuff like this. I'll also try logging on with the F-key as SIW2 suggests.

Please note - we live in a remote area in Scotland with no mains power or other services and this is being written thanks to power from a diesel generator, which will be switched off between 1 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. GMT Sunday. I'll then have power until 1 a.m. Monday (because the genny would soon burn out if it ran 24/7!) I'm saying this because if I don't reply until Sunday evening, I haven't lost interest! Thanks again for being so helpful.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio
Hi,

The key varies according to manufacturer - keep tapping it during the black startup / white writing screen ( Power on Self Test )as it's hard to get the timing right.
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
Quick update - have found command rstrui.exe and am now into system restore from safe mode - will try that first and report back with progress. Thanks again!
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio
And it worked! Message says 'System Restore completed successfully. The system has been restored to 25.03.2009 21.51.31. Your documents have not been affected.'

The updates I did after that time were iTunes 8.1 and Quicktime so they may be to blame, possibly by conflicting with Shield Deluxe in some way - I'm going to look into that and maybe ditch Shield, although it's apparently based on BitDefender and gets great reviews - when I hear from their support I'll post the response here.

This forum is 100% responsible for me getting a dead laptop back to life, so many thanks to everyone for their great advice! If only we could 'system restore' ourselves in real-life when things go wrong!
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio
Hi Invicta,

Glad it worked out for you.

Don't forget to run those recovery discs off straight away.

Have a good weekend:D

P.S I don't know anything about Shield Deluxe - many of us use the free Avast Home ( you need to register - for a free key )
www.avast.com
 

My Computers

System One System Two

  • Operating System
    Vista
    CPU
    Intel E8400
    Motherboard
    ASRock1333-GLAN R2.0
    Memory
    4gb DDR2 800
    Graphics Card(s)
    nvidia 9500GT 1gb
  • Operating System
    win7/vista
    CPU
    intel i5-8400
    Motherboard
    gigabyte b365m ds3h
    Memory
    ballistix 2x8gb 3200
Thanks, I'll try Avast - Shield has just failed to start saying it has a problem, so I've switched Windows Defender on in the meantime - and I'll do those recovery disks!

You have a good weekend too!
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Sony Vaio
Try to get a vista recovery disc from a friend, or just download a torrent (REPAIR ONLY) from here:
Windows Vista Recovery Disc Download — The NeoSmart Files
Then boot from it.
There will be Install and Repair.
Install will NOT work but repair will. Click repair and it will ask you to select an OS. Select yours and when it loads into WindowsRE you can do a system restore. If that does not work, load into WindowsRE and click command prompt. At the window type

SFC /scannow

System file checker will check your files and if there are any errors, they will replace them with fresh ones. If that does not work run Startup Repair, and if that doesn't work, order support discs and reinstall Vista!
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Apple MacBook Pro 13inch
    CPU
    Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.26GHz
    Motherboard
    ?
    Memory
    2GB DDR3 RAM
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 9400M @256MB Dedicated DDR3 VRAM
    Sound Card
    Intel High Definition Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Laptop: 32 bit Color LCD
    Screen Resolution
    1280x800
    Hard Drives
    HITACHI HTS545025B9SA02 250GB (Internal)
    IOMEGA PRESTIGE PORTABLE 500GB (External)
    PSU
    N/A
    Case
    N/A
    Cooling
    N/A
    Keyboard
    Black Chiclet-Style Keyboard (Standard US) with Backlight
    Mouse
    No-Button Aluminum Trackpad w/ Mouse Gestures
    Internet Speed
    T1
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