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Thread: Empty box - Spybot problem?

  1. #11
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    yes, I have uninstalled & then re-installed Spybot 1.4 about a week ago and also fixed the "accept/ deny" screen problem using suggestions on another one of your forums.

    I have now disabled teatimer and there is no problem over the past 8 hours. Will keep you posted.

    How about re-installing Windows ME? Maybe there is something corrupted?

    thanks LonnyRJones

  2. #12
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    Im asking the others . hang tight please.

  3. #13
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    Hi
    Could you post a screenshot of this "empty box" please
    "fixed the "accept/ deny",
    since editing tea timer have you tried a uninstall/reinstall ?

    Have you been to windows update latley ?

    Go start run type in qfecheck, expand all and tell use if anything is marked in red

  4. #14
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    I ran qfecheck .. expanded all .. nothing red.

    I just checked Windows update ... no critical updates available. Only a bunch of language stuff.

    After I fixed the "deny/ accept" problem, I have not uninstalled and re-installed Spybot 1.4. Is this what you mean? (Wouldn't this reverse the fix?); I have since done other install/ re-installs and it is a good fix.

    Screen shoot of the "empty box". The only way is perhaps a photograph ... will do. I will have to turn on teatimer to get it back on!

    For the record, I have disabled teatimer now for the past 72 hours. No "empty boxes", no reboots, no problems. I scheduled it for daily scans and it is running like that.

    Thanks LonnyRJones for sticking by me in this endeavour to find out what is going on.
    Last edited by uno meister; 2005-11-09 at 03:00.

  5. #15
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    After I fixed the "deny/ accept" problem, I have not uninstalled and re-installed SpyBot 1.4. Is this what you mean? (Wouldn't this reverse the fix?); I have since done other install/ re-installs and it is a good fix.
    I'm confused, So you have or have not uninstalled, rebooted then reinstalled SSD after modifying Tea Timer ?
    I'm thinking that when doing so it would be real easy to mess it up, one character is all it would take.

  6. #16
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    Lonny:

    We've seen this on rare occasions in the past, but never really determined what's causing it. It usually occured on Win 98SE, but could theoretically happen to any Win 9x/ME system.

    The old threads about this were lost (NI), but included an early situation with T-Zero after an upgrade to Nod32 and a couple others with less info.

    My belief is that this is an issue with Power Management since the problem would occur when the PC sat idle for an exact period such as 20 or 30 mins. or 1 or 2 hours. Even though those affected would claim they had completely turned off PM, I don't trust 98SE itself since it was imfamous for issues with Power Management, enabled or not. I'm not saying I blame PM itself, but more likely it's a condition triggered by PM putting something to sleep that causes TeaTimer (and possibly another antimalware, such as AV) to react badly and quickly exhaust resources, which is a symptom not the real problem.

    This is the first ME system affected that I recall, but it's been several months since the issue first occured. As you can see, I don't believe this is a simple problem, though I could get tricked. I do know we tried many things with T-Zero before he gave up and seemed no nearer an actual solution.

    uno meister: You could try disabling Power Management if it's on, it may be more controllable in ME, though it's based on the same code. Power Management never really worked properly until Windows 2000 released, since the core design of both the 9x/ME OS and the underlying BIOS code of the PCs of that era really weren't capable of it yet.

    Note that one of the other error messages you've seen came from Autodown, which is part of your AV software. This may also be involved since we've seen other AV software interact with TeaTimer in the past (they're both actively monitoring parts of the OS) with a symptom of fast climbing memory usage until a resources error or some other crash occurs. Might want to try turning off the active monitoring portion of the AV to see what happens with TeaTimer left on.

    I know you may not want to run that way permanently, but it would give Patrick something to try to fix if we determine that's the core issue here. As I said at the time this first occured, the small number of PCs affected and the apparent complexity of the problem make it unlikely that Team Spybot could find the problem even if they had the time for it.

  7. #17
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    Thanks Bitman

    Regards

  8. #18
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    Thanks Bitman. What you say fits the symptoms well. Looks like I have something that is not common. In fact, 2 other computers with ME at home do not have this "empty box" problem.

    One thing of interest is that I turned tea timer back on about 72 hours ago, and surprisingly no empty boxes yet! Only problem was that Spybot froze on its 2:00 am auto scheduled scan after 75% of the scan was done. Reboot worked. I will wait and see tonight. If it does not repeat, great.

    If it freezes again, I might turn off Tea timer permanently and use the scheduled scan once per day? Should be good enough?

    Also, you stated potential interaction with other antimalware. I have Adaware installed and now since last week it does not launch at all. Says "Exception Error module Adaware.." and something in German. I uninstalled and re-installed and still the same thing? Adaware is not on scheduled auto scan though.

    Perhaps I should re-install ME? What do you think?

    Thanks, Lonny & Bitman for the help.

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