Odd Windows Problems

For the last few days I’ve had some really odd windows problems. Not sure if they are related to XP Service Pack 2, but I haven’t done a huge amount of installing or modifying of the system since I installed XPSP2. Basically the system is fine until I leave it overnight, and then when I come back and try to use it I get the following type of messages:


  • When going to start->run I get the message:


    “Windows cannot create a shortcut here

    Do you want the shortcut to be placed on the desktop instead? [Yes/No].”


    If I say yes, the message “Windows could not create the shortcut. Check to see if the disk is full. [OK]”


    At one point it would actually put a ‘shortcut to run’ on the desktop, and when clicked gave it’s own error message.
  • When trying to move around my filesystem (with an already opened explorer window by hitting the ‘up’ button) I get:


    “C:\<whatever the path is> is not accessible.

    Not enough quota is available to process this command. [OK]”
  • When clicking on an executable file (putty.exe) that happened to be in the previously mentioned open explorer window I get:


    “Windows could not access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item. [OK]”
  • Trying to run ‘Scan with AVG’ from the context menu gives:


    “Cannot run C:\<path>\avgse.exe, error 0. [OK]”
  • No ‘New…’ option in the context menu.
  • Hitting CTRL-ALT-DEL to get to the task manager:


    “The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000017). Click OK to terminate the application. [OK]”.
  • In the start menu the ‘all programs’ is completely empty.

I’d give more but right now that’s about all I could get to. Another thing is that when I shut down (or log out, depending on how wedged the system is… this morning I only had the option to switch user or logout, and when I did the dialogue isn’t the standard bubbly XP one.


I have 30G of free space on the drive, and after a reboot all is back to normal. Any suggestions? A quick look through google didn’t give any good clues. Any windows folks want to try to help me out?


Update: Came home after working on the house to find a couple more interesting ones. I had left firefox running and I have the following message box:


“The exceptoing Guard Page Exception

A page of memory that makrs the end of a data structure, such as a stack or array, has been accessed (0x80000001) occurred in the application at location 0x77c57124.


Click on OK to terminate the program

Click on CANCEL to debug the program

[OK/Cancel]”


I can get the start->run dialoge now, but when trying to run ‘cmd’ I’m told it’s not a valid win32 application. If I had some funky screensaver (which I did, I had the new SETI@Home BOINC running for a couple of days) I’d blame that, but I’ve got it set to the default one, and this wierd stuff is only kicking in over long periods of time, not the 10 minutes it takes for the screensaver to kick in šŸ™ Running chkdsk from the start->run gives me ‘Not enough quota is available to process this command.”


Yay.


All my spyware scanners and virus scanners show nothing either.

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Category: Technology

13 Comments on “Odd Windows Problems”

  2. Sounds like each of those problems touches your file system in some way/shape/form – give it a “chkdsk /f” (it’ll want to reboot to lock the disk tho)
    It’s rare, but sometimes NTFS actually does get fucked up.

  5. When you reboot hit F8 until you get the startup menu. Go in “Command line only” and run your chkdsk /f.
    Money says it’s the drive (not much mind you, this IS windows g)

  6. Negatory, the disk check is fine and…. hmm…. maybe it’s the disk
    coming back up from being spun down.
    The system operates fine after a reboot, and things only bust if it’s
    left for a long time, and I think I have the power saving set up to spin
    down the disk after 1h or something like that.
    Thanks for tweaking the brain, that might be it!

  7. This error is also displayed on a verified clean system after running a DVD encode that consumed all of windows resources. I suspect this is a flaw in windows (or at least resource management), not a virus/malware or currupt OS.

  8. Something is eating RAM, no question.
    I had the same problem, and after closing all windows I had enough ram to run task manager before the stray process consumed all of the ram.
    In my case it was “svchost.exe”, it was eating 2.5 GB/ Ram and 100 percent cpu.
    So, your culprit is some application.
    -Luke

  9. Something is eating RAM, no question.
    I had the same problem, and after closing all windows I had enough ram to run task manager before the stray process consumed all of the ram.
    In my case it was “svchost.exe”, it was eating 2.5 GB/ Ram and 100 percent cpu.
    So, your culprit is some application.
    -Luke

  10. I am facing the same problem. I had run a windows upgrade three days back. After that I seemed to get this problems. Strangely I can go to task manager, File and Run, and execute my programs.
    I have un-installed norton anti virus, and am not sure if that has caused the problem.
    Any help is appreciated.
    Suresh

  11. I’m having exactly the same errors. and still I didn’t find the sourse of the problem. Did you managed to solve the problem?

  12. It’s been a while since I’ve used a windows computer, but try checking out the folder permissions on the drive itself
    Go into “My Computer”
    Right-click on the drive that’s giving you problems, and go to properties
    Make sure you have read and write access to the drive
    After that, open up a command prompt, and type in the following line
    takeown /f c:\ /t
    (change c:\ to the name of the drive that’s giving you problems)
    That should give you permissions for the whole drive, and should solve the problem. If it doesn’t, please post any errors in “additional details”.

  13. Had some problem installing service pack 2.
    Windows installer somehow got broken so I bought a utility to help fix the problem (spotmau powersuite pro)
    I lost my 3+1 raid array, windows demanded a re-register, and actshell.htm won’t run because not enough quota is available to process command.
    System has 3 gigs of memory, a 320 gig boot drive and nothing else is running.
    I am now locked out and can’t get back in.
    Any suggestions?