Last night it all went wrong!

[Planejunky]

I was happily flying SFG last night, but when I closed the program down it threw Vista into a tailspin! Every time I opened windows explorer it opened 45 times, same with any notepad documents. I couln't even shut the machine down and had to shut it down with the power button.

 

I've uninstalled and reinstalled SFG into a new folder in my documents where I can now finally get the sim to run, however the moment I click on single mission, I now get a CTD, same goes for instant combat.

 

I've had the sime running fine for some time now, and WoE is working perfectly well, so this is a real mystery. Anyone else seen this problem and can offer some help please?

 

Many thanks in advance

 

Justyn

[MaverickMike]

This is the third time in 2 days of me hearing about vista doing this. All different circumstances aswell. Strange. Maybe its a trojan or some form of malware thats doing the circuit.

 

Mike

[Planejunky]

I've just finished flying in WoE, and the same thing happened as last night, the whole system went insane, and I had to hit the power button! I did a virus scan last night and turned up nothing, defragged the disk and registry too.

 

This is all very weard!

Edited July 16, 2009 by Planejunky

[ONETINSOLDIER]

CHECK YOUR VIDEO DRIVERS AND IF YOUVE UPDATED RECENTLY, ROLL BACK TO THE PREVIOUS DRIVER (sorry for caps, but im too lazy to redo it, lol)

i had a similar problem with il2, it would open about 75 command line interfaces when starting the sim, i was using an ati card at the time

[Planejunky]

Last night the following updates were automatically installed on my machine. I wonder if something here has caused a problem?

 

Cumulative Security Update for ActiveX Killbits for Windows Vista (KB973346)

 

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool - July 2009 (KB890830)

 

Security Update for Windows Vista (KB961371)

[Planejunky]

CHECK YOUR VIDEO DRIVERS AND IF YOUVE UPDATED RECENTLY, ROLL BACK TO THE PREVIOUS DRIVER (sorry for caps, but im too lazy to redo it, lol)

i had a similar problem with il2, it would open about 75 command line interfaces when starting the sim, i was using an ati card at the time

 

I've tried playing with the drivers mate, still no joy.

[ONETINSOLDIER]

im not very familiar with vista, but is there a event recorder as in xp? maybe it can shed some light on the subject. Also, try restoring to before those updates, ya never know, it might do the trick.

[scouserlad13]

I was happily flying SFG last night, but when I closed the program down it threw Vista into a tailspin! Every time I opened windows explorer it opened 45 times, same with any notepad documents. I couln't even shut the machine down and had to shut it down with the power button.

 

If this happens again, you dont have to switch it off at the power button. Just press Ctrl Alt Dlt and select task manager. Then once the task manager has opened up go to the processes section an the program's that have the highest memory, such as your internet explorer for example, find it in the list and press end process, then that should stop it popping up.

 

As far as your problem goes, ive had this before, and i just did a system restore to an earlier date and that seemed to sort it. Head on over to the KB, there is some help in there for running thirdwire sims on Vista.

[Planejunky]

If this happens again, you dont have to switch it off at the power button. Just press Ctrl Alt Dlt and select task manager. Then once the task manager has opened up go to the processes section an the program's that have the highest memory, such as your internet explorer for example, find it in the list and press end process, then that should stop it popping up.

 

As far as your problem goes, ive had this before, and i just did a system restore to an earlier date and that seemed to sort it. Head on over to the KB, there is some help in there for running thirdwire sims on Vista.

 

I tried ctrl+alt+delete mate, it sent the machine mad!

 

I thought I'd set Vista to create restore dates automatically (as per XP),however when I went into it, I found it had not set any restore dates. It's starting to look like a total rebuild is on the cards.

[+JediMaster]

Usually system restore is on automatically from the time of Vista (and XP) install. My laptop was suffering and I went to do Sysrestore only to also discover not a single point. Now, normally in addition to periodic snapshots Windows will also take one anytime a program is installed or uninstalled. I knew something was up. Searching around the net I discovered there are issues with permissions on HDs that prevent sysrestore from writing snapshots to the directory it should be. These issues, however, only seem to appear on OEM loads of Windows ie on PCs bought with Windows already on it, not on ones that people built themselves or bought an upgrade of Windows and installed over their previous versions.

If this is you, then you may well have this same problem and sysrestore won't work for you at all.

 

In the end, I was forced to back up and restore my entire OS on the laptop. That was a fun half-day.

[Planejunky]

In the end, I was forced to back up and restore my entire OS on the laptop. That was a fun half-day.

 

To be honest that seems to be the only solution I have. I've already backed up the stuff on my HD, now going to have to take the plunge and also waste half a day on returning my PC to a usable state.