A little PC help please

[Khorus]

Since yesterday I have been getting this window that pops up saying:

"Internet explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close", with an option to debug to close. Hitting close just re-displays the same box. When I hit debug, it tells me that I don't have a debugger, but it closes the window. It pops up again a few minutes later. The weird thing is I don't even use IE, I only user Firefox and have not opened IE in I don't know how long. Anybody see this problem or know how to fix it? Any help is appreciated.

p.s. I ran the latest Ad-Aware and I am up on the virus protection. It doesn't seem like it is a virus, maybe just a weird problem with IE. It is very annoying though, popping up every few minutes.

 

[ehsan]

god damnit man, you got the gay virus and must of transffered it to your computer thru the keyboard.
geek squad best buy

 

[Khorus]

god damnit man, you got the gay virus and must of transffered it to your computer thru the keyboard.
geek squad best buy

LOL dude! It is iexplore.exe that is giving me trouble, not ehsan.gay!!

 

[ehsan]

steve jobs is your only cure, he know s a thing or two about gays and turtle necks. his erection has the ability to cure any PC virus.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

Khorusjan,

An application is attempting to use IE to do something. It's most likely a trojan not detected by ad-aware and your anti-virus. Try running malwarebytes. It should find things.

Btw, what happens when you open IE yourself and try to browse? are you able to at all?

 

[Khorus]

Khorusjan,

An application is attempting to use IE to do something. It's most likely a trojan not detected by ad-aware and your anti-virus. Try running malwarebytes. It should find things.

Btw, what happens when you open IE yourself and try to browse? are you able to at all?

I will give malwarebytes a try. IE functions just fine when I do open it. I tried to uninstall it, but there is really no uninstall for IE, I took it out of the windows features, but I think it just rolls is back to the earlier versions, and it still out there, because I can just type iexplore.exe in the run command and it will come up.

 

[Khorus]

BT jaan, Malwarebytes found a few things, that were mostly older stuff. It didn't fix the problem. Any other ideas?

 

[ChaharMahal]

Khorous jan.
I don't know what OS you are running on.
if you are running on vista or windows 7 you can press on start button.
and type internet explorer you should see an option that reads
"internet explorer (no add-ons)"

if you run that your browse will run without any extension let see if it crashes even with that.

if you cannot find internet explorer no add-ons

go to command prompt and run the following command. dont forget the quotes since there is space in that path.

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" -extoff


1--> if your browser does not crash with no add-on option
then go to tools menu to Manage add-ons and disable every one of them.

then run you regular IE and see if it works fine. If it did then go and uinstall all your IEToolbars and ActiveX and add-ons.

2-->if IE keeps on crashing then I suggest uninstalling all your security products and install the free Microsoft Security essentialls (IT is free , good enough and does not slow down your machine)


http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/


consider running autoruns to see if thereis a program that are getting run without your permission on the startup (there is plenty of legitimate yet annoying ones, I am talking about suspicious ones)

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx


also if IE is still poping up with crash message. don't touch it. runs Process Explorer and see if you can figure out which program is launching it.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

 

[Khorus]

Hmashahri, thanks for the info. Here is what I have done so far.

First of all, I am not even running IE, but the following error pops up out of nowhere. It looks like every few minutes something kicks off IE, but IE doesn't come up and only the error screen comes up. The close button just redisplays the same message box, but if I click debug, I get the error that I don't have a debugger, but it closes the message box at least.

1. I have run with no extensions, i.e. having all the add-ons disabled.
2. I tried installing the latest IE version
3. I ran the latest Adaware and malwarebytes and neither one fixed it.
4. I ran process explorer, but I am a little out of my element. It seems that the iexplore.exe just pops in out of nowhere, and the parent seems to be explorer.com. I tried killing the process (and process tree), but it keeps coming back.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

It seems that the iexplore.exe just pops in out of nowhere, and the parent seems to be explorer.com. I tried killing the process (and process tree), but it keeps coming back.

this is a highly probable case of a classic virus (not a malware or trojan as those usually can't attach themselves to explorer.exe)

I'm not sure why your antivirus hasn't picked it up. which one are you running?

i just noticed you typed "explorer.com". Is that a typo or you really have something called explorer.com?

 

[Bache Tehroon]

Shahryarjan,

Take a look at this thread:
IEXPLORE.exe, ad pop-ups, wave audio control goes mute - MajorGeeks Support Forums

 

[ChaharMahal]

khoroos jan

What OS are you running? (Run WinVer.exe to find out)

What Version of Internet Explorer do you have installed? I am assuming you have IE8.

 

[Khorus]

khoroos jan

What OS are you running? (Run WinVer.exe to find out)

What Version of Internet Explorer do you have installed? I am assuming you have IE8.

this is a highly probable case of a classic virus (not a malware or trojan as those usually can't attach themselves to explorer.exe)

I'm not sure why your antivirus hasn't picked it up. which one are you running?

i just noticed you typed "explorer.com". Is that a typo or you really have something called explorer.com?

I think I might have found the culprit. First of all, BT jaan, I meant explorer.exe not .com (too much time on the internet I guess). Second, Esamani, I am running XP media Center Edition (I know, I know, but it is what the computer came with a few years ago when I bought it).

It seems the culprit was Media Center itself. I used the process explorer and watched it waiting for the message box to pop-up to see which processes showed activity. I noticed some activity with and svchost task that was running ehmsas.exe when the message box popped up. So I suspended that svchost task and didn't get the message box afte that. Exactly was ehmsas.exe is doing, I am not certain, but it is the "Media Center State Aggregator Service" and it is part of the operating system. I don't know if Media Center is trying to do something online, like pull program schedules or something like that and is having an issue, or if the file got corrupted due to some virus or malware. I have to do a little more digging on that, but suspending the task keeps the message box from popping up.

 

[ChaharMahal]

Khourous jan
I can assure you that Media Center would not try to pop internet explorer windows up. (atleast in it's originial format).

I don't know if you have installed Internet explorer 8.0

but if you have not, I think it is worth a try. perhaps we can hope that it would repair the problem.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/

 

[Khorus]

Khourous jan
I can assure you that Media Center would not try to pop internet explorer windows up. (atleast in it's originial format).

I don't know if you have installed Internet explorer 8.0

but if you have not, I think it is worth a try. perhaps we can hope that it would repair the problem.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/

I had IE 8 when this all started, and I even reinstalled it, and it was still happening. Sounds like somebody messed with a system file. I am at work now, but when I get a chance, I will have to dig a little deeper. Thanks for your help.

p.s. That state aggregator thing is a process that send information regarding Media Center to MS, from what I have read, so it make sense that it try to connect to the internet somehow, but I can see your point too. Maybe somebody hijacked that process.

 

[Khorus]

Ok, it wasn't Media Center!! :-ohno: I thought I had suspended ehmsas.exe, but I had actually suspended svchost.exe when the problem went away. Of course, when I suspend svchost.exe, a lot of other stuff that should work doesn't work either. So I have to figure out which one of the several svchost.exe running is the culprit!! I could still use some help guys. It has proven difficult to pinpoint. Can you guys tell anything from the threads. I suspect it restarts itself whenever it runs, but killing the threads doesn't seem to do anything. Thanks.

p.s. I am running Norton Antivirus and the definitions are uptodate as of a couple of days ago.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

You might be experiencing a Lop.com infection. Some Lop variants have symptoms similar to yours.

I am running Norton Antivirus

Norton is known to be ignorant about Lop and Conficker.

My suggestions:

Run Avast free edition and see if it helps.

 

[Khorus]

You might be experiencing a Lop.com infection. Some Lop variants have symptoms similar to yours.



Norton is known to be ignorant about Lop and Conficker.

My suggestions:

Run Avast free edition and see if it helps.

Thanks BT jaan, I will see about installing Avast (I have it on a couple of other PCs in my house and happy with it), and see if it catches it. In the mean time, I will see if I can find lop.com on my PC.

 

[Bache Tehroon]

Thanks BT jaan, I will see about installing Avast (I have it on a couple of other PCs in my house and happy with it), and see if it catches it. In the mean time, I will see if I can find lop.com on my PC.

lop.com is not a file it's a URL (www.lop.com). It's just a name they have given a series of downloadable infections that all adhere to the same data-collection scam. apparently www.lop.com was the website that was identified as the first source for this infection.

 

[Khorus]

FYI, I installed Avast and ran a quick scan ( which is not all that quick). It found 5 things, of which 3 of them were false positives I believe, having to do with live streaming. The other 2, one looked like a Hotfix by MS (like 80094.exe or something like that in the system restore volume), and the other was java package, so I am not sure if either one of those were real viruses, but I quarantined all 5, and restarted the system. It seems to have fixed the problem of the message box popping up that IE has failed. I do, however, still see and iexplore.exe in the active tasks list, but it doesn't seem to be doing anything and no message box comes up. So at least, the sysmptoms seem to have been fixed, although I am not sure exactly what was wrong!! Thanks for your help, guys.