Bug which prevents me from lauching game

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Hello!

I'm pretty sure I have (at least) one virus on my computer. And in the last week or so, it started acting funny. I decided to wipe my hard drive and reinstall everything, but since I lack the time to do so, I wanted to wait until Christmas time.

Last week, my internet all of a sudden started spewing porn pop-ups (that's why I think I have a virus). After I forced closed my browser, I couldn't connect to the internet when I tried opening it up again. It last for a couple of days. And all of a sudden, the web browser started to work again. As soon as it worked, I noticed that everytime I try to launch my Witcher game, it doesn't work (the autoplay pops, I click on "launch game", the screen goes black, and then it goes back to my desktop with no game window active in the taskbar...). I tried some other games like Sims 3 (yes yes, laugh all you want, it's my guilty pleasure...), and they work. I even tried to uninstall and reinstall the Witcher game, and it still doesn't work...

I really want to wait until Christmas, but I just started playing The Witcher. Does someone know a few tricks I could try so the game works in the meanwhile?

Thanks!!!

 

Well you could do a quick scan and see if it is an easy to remove virus, but it doesn't seem like it will be. [I highly suggest Spyboy Search & Destroy, it doesn't catch everything, but it does a very good job of catching most things.]

I assume since you're going to wipe your hard drive anyway, you wouldn't mind doing a system restore to before the porn-pop ups happened (hopefully it hasn't been too long). If you don't know how to system restore, I or someone else can surely walk you through it.


I don't really know enough to help eradicate particular viruses, but there are forums dedicated to virus removal (they ask you to run a few scans, tell you what to do, very easy).

 

Ug, or very uneasy, if you've got a bad one. I once spent a week trying to get rid of some particularly nasty thing before just wiping the hard drive anyway, so that was a week wasted.

Wipe it now before the evil lurking in there is loosed in some way you don't expect. Got personal data saved? Why would you want to leave it alone with Melvin the antisocial teenaged hacker for two months?

 

Gaear's got a point with that babe

 

If you have a virus, then Witcher is also infected. When you have a program that hasn't been infected yet, the virus will immediately infect it as soon as you start that application. Reinstalling won't work. I think that programs like Witcher won't start because a) the executable has been modified by the virus, and b) the copy protection within Witcher won't allow the executable to start when that has been modified.

 

CCleaner is a good program to download and use to fix virus problems, program errors, and registry errors. I've used it to fix browser hijacks and program crashed like you describe in the past. Just be sure to backup your registry beforehand (I think it gives you the option) before you make any changes.

 

When you have re-installed windows, make a partition on the harddisk. Place all other stuff in that partition and keep the C drive clean. Only windows, antivirus, and drivers.

Why? So when you re-instal windows only the C partition is formatted, not the other partition. you still need to install the programs after a fresh install, but the data in my documents is still there. so are the save-games, video's and pictures.

 

Thanks for the input everybody.

Yeah, as I said, the reason I wanted to wait was because I don't have a lot of time to re-install everything (especially since I'll get Windows 7 instead of Vista.... ugh, never again Vista....). I often work very late and my week-ends are booked. What little free time I have, I like to play games so I don't go crazy... Yeah, I guess start soon and do it bit by bit.

I already have Spybot and Adaware. But both turn up nothing, though there are suspiscious messages that lead me to believe they're not to be trusted.

I have two hard drives, so I'll copy on DVDs and on my second drive all the important stuff (personnal folders, save games, etc) and wipe my C then reinstall everything.