Hi,
First, thanks for being willing to provide this kind of support.
I followed all your steps, but when I double-click DDS, I get a message that it is not meant to run in compatibility mode.
I do not have any Windows discs, and I do not have an optical drive on my computer.
You asked for details, so here's my novel! I've also attached the details of my problem in a TXT file, which I used to copy/paste here, but lines seem to disappear, duplicate, or overwrite when I scroll through this box.
The things most worrisome to me: McAfee continues to do erratic things, the mysterious timestamp file in C:/USERS/MARLENE, the huge system files with the same timestamp, the skipped drive letter, and the remote support software is denied access to my computer.
So many things have gone wrong in the past week, it's hard to know where to start, but since McAfee is still doing erratic things, I'll start there.
I have a Dell Inspiron 15 5547 laptop, Windows 8.1, but I run on the Desktop about 99% of the time. I bought it Jan 2015, it came with McAfee installed and I am now VERY SORRY to say I never did anything about that to install better security software.
First possible problem: Thurs 9/3 McAfee update download hung at 75%. I waited awhile, cancelled and restarted it, hung at 0%. I bought Dell Concierge 3-year support service with the computer so I called them. They took remote control, uninstalled and reinstalled McAfee and the new downloads and updates worked.
Sat-Mon 9/5-7 (Labor Day weekend) we were having technical problems with cable service in my area. Service was up and down a lot so I wasn't on my computer much, but I am connected via WiFI, so just because I wasn't on my computer doesn't mean it wasn't connected some of the time. When I started working Tuesday 9/8, I had 80+ new emails. I use Microsoft Outlook 2007 email, desktop POP3 client, so my email is downloaded to my hard drive. The Send/Receive seemed to hang on the 4th email, but a friend sometime sends large video files so I just went online to do something else.
Internet Explorer started up with a very legitimate looking red McAfee Web Advisor banner that my firewall was not up and gave an option to start it or proceed without it. There was no way around this without making a choice, so I closed (X) Internet Explorer.
Then I got a very legitimate looking Windows Security popup on my desktop that indicated I had no firewall running and to choose to start either the Windows firewall or the McAfee firewall. I closed the dialog box
without choosing. I decided to call Dell to determine if they did something wrong when they reinstalled McAfee. Meanwhile, I checked and my email was still hung, so I closed MS Office Outlook.
Dell wanted me to try connecting with Google Chrome, but I don't have it installed. I do have Mozilla Firefox but it came up with the same red McAfee Web Advisor banner. They had me do a shutdown with the power button. When I started back up I was able to start IE. (And my email downloaded
ok.) However, when they tried to install their remote control software, it failed with an "access denied" error. We cleaned out temp files, reset IE, and got the same error. At that point they said all they could do was give me instructions to reset to factory setup and reinstall all my software. I said no, thank you, until I did some backups and attempted to determine if it was malware that could be removed.
All of this occurred between 11:45AM and 12:15PM Tuesday 9/8/15. Of course this is all happening in the middle of a project deadline, so I got my backup done and have been working offline as much as possible, just connecting once a day for 15-20 minutes to get my email and print anything I need, and keeping fingers crossed my computer doesn't completely crash.
Some odd things happened when I did my backup:
When I connected the external drive (USB) it connected as drive E instead of D. I disconnected it and put in a thumb drive, same thing, drive E. I don't know what's going on there.
I use NovaBackup to an external drive and typically backup C:/Users/Marlene. When I selected that folder for backup, at the top of Users/Marlene there was a folder I had never seen before named .oracle_je_usage and it had a Timestamp file in it dated 9/8/2015 11:55am. Since it was at the time I was having all the problems, I thought it was very suspicious, so (before reading your instructions) I copied it to an old thumb drive, deleted it and deleted it from the recycle bin. Then I did my data backup. Today the folder is back with a Timestamp file of 9/9 2:21pm.
Then, just because ... I don't necessarily know why, I decided to do a full C drive backup. I noticed 3 system files on C:\ with that 9/8 11:55am timestamp: hiberfil.sys 6.6GB, pagefile.sys 1.3GB, swapfile.sys 2.6MB.
Today, those files still have the 9/8 11:55am timestamp.
Now here I am on Saturday, ready to get this submitted to you. I wanted to do a quick backup of my changed documents and mail to a thumb drive and put in a couple to try to find one with space. I put in one I have used many times before. It "dinged" and a popup said it was installing "Ultra". I don't have a CLUE what that is about! "Ultra" does not show up on Control Panel as a program I can Uninstall. I opened a brand new thumb drive, did my current file backup, followed your instructions, and here I am.
Bottom line, I do not know if I was running without a firewall for days or not.
Since DDS won't run, what do I do now?
First, thanks for being willing to provide this kind of support.
I followed all your steps, but when I double-click DDS, I get a message that it is not meant to run in compatibility mode.
I do not have any Windows discs, and I do not have an optical drive on my computer.
You asked for details, so here's my novel! I've also attached the details of my problem in a TXT file, which I used to copy/paste here, but lines seem to disappear, duplicate, or overwrite when I scroll through this box.
The things most worrisome to me: McAfee continues to do erratic things, the mysterious timestamp file in C:/USERS/MARLENE, the huge system files with the same timestamp, the skipped drive letter, and the remote support software is denied access to my computer.
So many things have gone wrong in the past week, it's hard to know where to start, but since McAfee is still doing erratic things, I'll start there.
I have a Dell Inspiron 15 5547 laptop, Windows 8.1, but I run on the Desktop about 99% of the time. I bought it Jan 2015, it came with McAfee installed and I am now VERY SORRY to say I never did anything about that to install better security software.
First possible problem: Thurs 9/3 McAfee update download hung at 75%. I waited awhile, cancelled and restarted it, hung at 0%. I bought Dell Concierge 3-year support service with the computer so I called them. They took remote control, uninstalled and reinstalled McAfee and the new downloads and updates worked.
Sat-Mon 9/5-7 (Labor Day weekend) we were having technical problems with cable service in my area. Service was up and down a lot so I wasn't on my computer much, but I am connected via WiFI, so just because I wasn't on my computer doesn't mean it wasn't connected some of the time. When I started working Tuesday 9/8, I had 80+ new emails. I use Microsoft Outlook 2007 email, desktop POP3 client, so my email is downloaded to my hard drive. The Send/Receive seemed to hang on the 4th email, but a friend sometime sends large video files so I just went online to do something else.
Internet Explorer started up with a very legitimate looking red McAfee Web Advisor banner that my firewall was not up and gave an option to start it or proceed without it. There was no way around this without making a choice, so I closed (X) Internet Explorer.
Then I got a very legitimate looking Windows Security popup on my desktop that indicated I had no firewall running and to choose to start either the Windows firewall or the McAfee firewall. I closed the dialog box
without choosing. I decided to call Dell to determine if they did something wrong when they reinstalled McAfee. Meanwhile, I checked and my email was still hung, so I closed MS Office Outlook.
Dell wanted me to try connecting with Google Chrome, but I don't have it installed. I do have Mozilla Firefox but it came up with the same red McAfee Web Advisor banner. They had me do a shutdown with the power button. When I started back up I was able to start IE. (And my email downloaded
ok.) However, when they tried to install their remote control software, it failed with an "access denied" error. We cleaned out temp files, reset IE, and got the same error. At that point they said all they could do was give me instructions to reset to factory setup and reinstall all my software. I said no, thank you, until I did some backups and attempted to determine if it was malware that could be removed.
All of this occurred between 11:45AM and 12:15PM Tuesday 9/8/15. Of course this is all happening in the middle of a project deadline, so I got my backup done and have been working offline as much as possible, just connecting once a day for 15-20 minutes to get my email and print anything I need, and keeping fingers crossed my computer doesn't completely crash.
Some odd things happened when I did my backup:
When I connected the external drive (USB) it connected as drive E instead of D. I disconnected it and put in a thumb drive, same thing, drive E. I don't know what's going on there.
I use NovaBackup to an external drive and typically backup C:/Users/Marlene. When I selected that folder for backup, at the top of Users/Marlene there was a folder I had never seen before named .oracle_je_usage and it had a Timestamp file in it dated 9/8/2015 11:55am. Since it was at the time I was having all the problems, I thought it was very suspicious, so (before reading your instructions) I copied it to an old thumb drive, deleted it and deleted it from the recycle bin. Then I did my data backup. Today the folder is back with a Timestamp file of 9/9 2:21pm.
Then, just because ... I don't necessarily know why, I decided to do a full C drive backup. I noticed 3 system files on C:\ with that 9/8 11:55am timestamp: hiberfil.sys 6.6GB, pagefile.sys 1.3GB, swapfile.sys 2.6MB.
Today, those files still have the 9/8 11:55am timestamp.
Now here I am on Saturday, ready to get this submitted to you. I wanted to do a quick backup of my changed documents and mail to a thumb drive and put in a couple to try to find one with space. I put in one I have used many times before. It "dinged" and a popup said it was installing "Ultra". I don't have a CLUE what that is about! "Ultra" does not show up on Control Panel as a program I can Uninstall. I opened a brand new thumb drive, did my current file backup, followed your instructions, and here I am.
Bottom line, I do not know if I was running without a firewall for days or not.
Since DDS won't run, what do I do now?