ajdisciple
2014-05-29, 15:51
Thank you for taking time to consider diagnosing a condition affecting my computer's speed, browser performance and floppy drive operation.
Please find the requested "DDS" file and the zipped "attach" file below. In mid-February, system startup, shutdown and general performance became much slower. Around that same time, I had problems with my Mozilla Firefox home page. Opening a new browser tab or new window showed an internet search website I had never heard of. The site was marked with a link to ClientConnect Ltd with web address "info.trovi.com". An internet search for information on this address revealed that it was associated with a redirect of the same name which matched the unfamiliar search website. Following recommendations from malwarebytes.com on removal, I reviewed my Add or Remove Programs listing and removed the Conduit Search application. I also made changes to the browser home page settings to remove the conduit information. The symptoms persisted, so I ran the McAfee anti-virus full system scan, MalwareBytes and CCleaner. McAfee produced no significant scan results. MalwareBytes and CCleaner both found numerous issues, but I neglected to keep logs of the changes that I then made. Regardless, the problem continued.
An internet article on the issue recommended registry modification. Once I saw the pattern of removing entries with the word "Conduit" in them, I went beyond the internet discussion's recommendations. I did a registry search for the word "Conduit" and I deleted most of the entries, only sparing ones that merely had the conduit website address. Instead of deleting these, I replaced the conduit website address with "www.google.com". The browser problem still continued, so I backed up my important documents with a couple different utilities. While doing so, another symptom came up on an irregular basis: prolonged 3.5" floppy drive operation without a disk in the drive.
After the typical system startup check for a boot disk and once a user account is selected, the floppy drive begins running. The drive light remains lit for periods of 6 minutes while it runs noisily without a disk in the drive and without explanation. A pause of about 1 to 2 minutes was followed by another 6 minutes of noisy drive operation. Today, I permitted the system to continue running rather than restarting the computer. After an hour and a half of this "2 minute off/ 6 minute on" pattern, the sound changed to a slightly higher pitch. After an additional half hour, Windows produced the message as shown below and the floppy drive operation stopped.
"Windows - No Disk
Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c
[Cancel] [Try Again] [Continue]"
Selecting "Try Again" merely produced the same error box.
Selecting "Continue" brought back the noisy floppy drive operation, but only for a moment. Even so, I shut down the computer since it began to run a number of processes which I gave up on identifying for now. During the shut down process, mcuicnt.exe gave a "DLL Initialization Failed" error and then the floppy drive resumed the previous noisy pattern until the system finished the shut down process. On the restart, there was little-to-no floppy drive operation.
The attached files are a few months old. The computer has been disconnected from all internet use and has been off since the data was taken, so it is current.
Where should I start?
Thank you.
Please find the requested "DDS" file and the zipped "attach" file below. In mid-February, system startup, shutdown and general performance became much slower. Around that same time, I had problems with my Mozilla Firefox home page. Opening a new browser tab or new window showed an internet search website I had never heard of. The site was marked with a link to ClientConnect Ltd with web address "info.trovi.com". An internet search for information on this address revealed that it was associated with a redirect of the same name which matched the unfamiliar search website. Following recommendations from malwarebytes.com on removal, I reviewed my Add or Remove Programs listing and removed the Conduit Search application. I also made changes to the browser home page settings to remove the conduit information. The symptoms persisted, so I ran the McAfee anti-virus full system scan, MalwareBytes and CCleaner. McAfee produced no significant scan results. MalwareBytes and CCleaner both found numerous issues, but I neglected to keep logs of the changes that I then made. Regardless, the problem continued.
An internet article on the issue recommended registry modification. Once I saw the pattern of removing entries with the word "Conduit" in them, I went beyond the internet discussion's recommendations. I did a registry search for the word "Conduit" and I deleted most of the entries, only sparing ones that merely had the conduit website address. Instead of deleting these, I replaced the conduit website address with "www.google.com". The browser problem still continued, so I backed up my important documents with a couple different utilities. While doing so, another symptom came up on an irregular basis: prolonged 3.5" floppy drive operation without a disk in the drive.
After the typical system startup check for a boot disk and once a user account is selected, the floppy drive begins running. The drive light remains lit for periods of 6 minutes while it runs noisily without a disk in the drive and without explanation. A pause of about 1 to 2 minutes was followed by another 6 minutes of noisy drive operation. Today, I permitted the system to continue running rather than restarting the computer. After an hour and a half of this "2 minute off/ 6 minute on" pattern, the sound changed to a slightly higher pitch. After an additional half hour, Windows produced the message as shown below and the floppy drive operation stopped.
"Windows - No Disk
Exception Processing Message c0000013 Parameters 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c 75b6bf7c
[Cancel] [Try Again] [Continue]"
Selecting "Try Again" merely produced the same error box.
Selecting "Continue" brought back the noisy floppy drive operation, but only for a moment. Even so, I shut down the computer since it began to run a number of processes which I gave up on identifying for now. During the shut down process, mcuicnt.exe gave a "DLL Initialization Failed" error and then the floppy drive resumed the previous noisy pattern until the system finished the shut down process. On the restart, there was little-to-no floppy drive operation.
The attached files are a few months old. The computer has been disconnected from all internet use and has been off since the data was taken, so it is current.
Where should I start?
Thank you.