When I read the title, I thought someone else had turned to the "Linux Side".   

Alas, no joy for me.

My suggestion is, if you don't have anything on the machine that your worried about keeping, just reinstall the Windows that you want to keep using the restore CD that should have come with your system.  It will walk you through a full reinstall of the machine.  Or you could download a fine Linux product such as Ubuntu or Kubuntu you could also try out Mandriva or OpenSuSE or Fedora 7 and install that, there are many howto's for "dual-booting" your system if you feel the need for Windows.  The only reason I keep it is for work applications and gaming.

Good luck in whatever you decide.

John

No problem.  Good luck.

John

If this is the same machine from the other posts, it may be time for a new machine.

From what I can understand from your post, you may need to flash the BIOS.
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/biosflash1.html

I wanted to insert a hyperlink, this should get you started, make sure you note what kind of BIOS you are currently running.  (Phoenix http://www.phoenix.com/en/Home/default.htm is probably the most popular).  American Megatrend http://www.ami.com/is another popular one.

Happy hunting.

John

It may seem minor to some, but customer service is where its at.  Within an hour of sending the email, I received a response from the Service Team.  A response without a solution is usually expected, one like "We're sorry you had this issue, we're getting to work on a solution right away!", Nope!  They actually provided the solution to the problem in the response.  I told them I would recommend their products based solely on CS, their website is:  http://www.sibental.com Look under the projects to find out what they have, I wasn't interested in the other prods, but my neighbor is.

Just thought I'd let you [all] know how things panned out.

John 

Okay, so heres the email that was sent to Media Resizer Pro peoples:

John to mediaresizer

To whom it may concern,
     I have been having an issue with my laptop since uninstalling your software.  Below is attached a transcript of the help I have received from the Windows Community (I'm GrayArray).  The issue seems to be that when you uninstall the SW not everything is removed, resulting in explorer crashes and Dr Watson not responding and dumping Logs!  I am emailing you to inform you in case the question comes from someone else other than myself.  Please read the post below to understand the issue I was having and everything that was done to fix it.  I haven't been able to right-click anything for over a week.

http://www.fixmyxp.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,216/topic,1749.0

Sincerely,
    John Litchfield
--
I am not bothered by the fact that I am unknown. I am bothered when I do not know others. -Confucius

The End, Thanks again Guys!

We came, we saw, we kicked it's a...  Well you get the point!

I found out where the problem was.  First step in debugging an issue of this type and I missed it!

ShellExView -> http://www.snapfiles.com/get/shellexview.html

I knew where the problem was/where it was blowing up, CONTEXT MENUS!  It just so happens that ShellExView has a field for "type" and "Context Menu" was there, so I started going through turning them off one by one until I found the culprit, or in this case 3 (It's a special case - I installed the MS Office 2007 Beta, and uninstalled it, but not everything came off!)

The main issue was a Class file called "SimpleShlExt Class" from a program named Media Resizer Pro.  I will be sending them an email regarding this issue, so maybe they can patch their software.  I appreciate the links and the assistance.  Keep up the great work.   

John

Not that I am extremely worried about spyware, but what would you recommend I use in it's place?  Sorry to put you on the spot, just wondering.

John

Just Install 2 linux(es) on 1 machine, TRIPLE BOOT!!!!    At one time I had WinXP Pro, Kubuntu, Fedora Core 5 and OpenBSD all on my laptop <- Specs:  AMD Athlon64, 2 GB RAM, 60GB HDD, and ATI Radeon Xpress 200M.

All booted wonderfully using the GRand Unified Bootloader aka GRUB.

Partitions:
hda1 = Windows = 15 GB
hda2 = OpenBSD = 9 GB split to = 8 GB / and ~ 1GB swap (I know, overkill for BSD)
hda3 = FAT32 Shared space =~ 15 GB
hda4 = Extended Partition
    hda5 = linux swap space = 512 MB (Still overkill with 2GB RAM)
    hda6 = FC5 / = 10 GB
    hda7 = Kubuntu / = 10 GB

Just thought this might help, getting the Linux(es) to behave and not use the other one's space was a bit tricky, but easily accomplished when you reinstall them both about 4 times, man I was getting tired of reinstalling.

John

I appreciate the help, really I do.  I also don't want to have to reinstall my machine, too many apps to find again.

Thanks a million fellas.

John

PS.  This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated.   

I have reinstalled my Linux partitions with many different flavors of Linux in the past.  I was becoming real fond of Kubuntu Feisty Fawn when I discovered all that Mandriva 2007.1 offered.  It detected all of my drivers, allows me to run the Xgl stuff, Metisse runs flawlessly on my trouble laptop and it is extremely quick.  It also allows you to encrypt partitions on install, I like to encrypt my home partition, but I have to break in to unencrypt before login...  One more step of security!  Anyone else care to comment...  I'm mostly doing this to keep threads going in this sub-forum.

John 

Okay, Output from HJT:
Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.0 (BETA)
Scan saved at 11:36:11 PM, on 6/26/2007
Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
Boot mode: Normal

Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Ati2evxx.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MsMpEng.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Ati2evxx.exe
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\aswUpdSv.exe
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashServ.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ZoneLabs\vsmon.exe
C:\Program Files\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm\zlclient.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\ALWILS~1\Avast4\ashDisp.exe
C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashMaiSv.exe
C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashWebSv.exe
C:\Program Files\SUPERAntiSpyware\SUPERAntiSpyware.exe
C:\WINDOWS\explorer.exe
C:\Documents and Settings\Gray_Array\Desktop\HiJackThis_v2.exe

R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Local Page =
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Connection Wizard,ShellNext = http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
R3 - URLSearchHook: Yahoo! Toolbar - {EF99BD32-C1FB-11D2-892F-0090271D4F88} - (no file)
O2 - BHO: Adobe PDF Reader Link Helper - {06849E9F-C8D7-4D59-B87D-784B7D6BE0B3} - C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\ActiveX\AcroIEHelper.dll
O2 - BHO: SSVHelper Class - {761497BB-D6F0-462C-B6EB-D4DAF1D92D43} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_06\bin\ssv.dll
O2 - BHO: Catcher Class - {ADECBED6-0366-4377-A739-E69DFBA04663} - C:\Program Files\Moyea\FLV Downloader\MoyeaCth.dll
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Zone Labs Client] C:\Program Files\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm\zlclient.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [avast!] C:\PROGRA~1\ALWILS~1\Avast4\ashDisp.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Windows Defender] "C:\Program Files\Windows Defender\MSASCui.exe" -hide
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [KernelFaultCheck] %systemroot%\system32\dumprep 0 -k
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SynTPLpr] C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPLpr.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SynTPEnh] C:\Program Files\Synaptics\SynTP\SynTPEnh.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [ZoneAlarm Client] "C:\Program Files\Zone Labs\ZoneAlarm\zlclient.exe"
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [QuickTime Task] "C:\Program Files\QuickTime\qttask.exe" -atboottime
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [iTunesHelper] "C:\Program Files\iTunes\iTunesHelper.exe"
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [SUPERAntiSpyware] C:\Program Files\SUPERAntiSpyware\SUPERAntiSpyware.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [ctfmon.exe] C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [Yahoo! Pager] "C:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\YahooMessenger.exe" -quiet
O4 - HKUS\S-1-5-18\..\Run: [DWQueuedReporting] "C:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\MICROS~1\DW\dwtrig20.exe" -t (User 'SYSTEM')
O4 - HKUS\.DEFAULT\..\Run: [DWQueuedReporting] "C:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\MICROS~1\DW\dwtrig20.exe" -t (User 'Default user')
O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~3\Office12\EXCEL.EXE/3000
O9 - Extra button: (no name) - AutorunsDisabled - (no file)
O9 - Extra button: (no name) - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_06\bin\ssv.dll
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Sun Java Console - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_06\bin\ssv.dll
O9 - Extra button: Research - {92780B25-18CC-41C8-B9BE-3C9C571A8263} - C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~3\Office12\REFIEBAR.DLL
O9 - Extra button: (no name) - {e2e2dd38-d088-4134-82b7-f2ba38496583} - %windir%\Network Diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe (file missing)
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: @xpsp3res.dll,-20001 - {e2e2dd38-d088-4134-82b7-f2ba38496583} - %windir%\Network Diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe (file missing)
O9 - Extra button: PartyPoker.net - {F4430FE8-2638-42e5-B849-800749B94EED} - C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: PartyPoker.net - {F4430FE8-2638-42e5-B849-800749B94EED} - C:\WINDOWS\system32\shdocvw.dll
O17 - HKLM\System\CCS\Services\Tcpip\..\{B73F6A48-4E28-4A9D-ACB1-567CF1ACB40D}: NameServer = 192.168.10.2
O20 - Winlogon Notify: !SASWinLogon - C:\Program Files\SUPERAntiSpyware\SASWINLO.dll
O22 - SharedTaskScheduler: Browseui preloader - {438755C2-A8BA-11D1-B96B-00A0C90312E1} - C:\WINDOWS\system32\browseui.dll
O22 - SharedTaskScheduler: Component Categories cache daemon - {8C7461EF-2B13-11d2-BE35-3078302C2030} - C:\WINDOWS\system32\browseui.dll
O23 - Service: avast! iAVS4 Control Service (aswUpdSv) - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\aswUpdSv.exe
O23 - Service: Ati HotKey Poller - ATI Technologies Inc. - C:\WINDOWS\system32\Ati2evxx.exe
O23 - Service: ATI Smart - Unknown owner - C:\WINDOWS\system32\ati2sgag.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Antivirus - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashServ.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Mail Scanner - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashMaiSv.exe
O23 - Service: avast! Web Scanner - ALWIL Software - C:\Program Files\Alwil Software\Avast4\ashWebSv.exe
O23 - Service: Google Updater Service (gusvc) - Google - C:\Program Files\Google\Common\Google Updater\GoogleUpdaterService.exe
O23 - Service: HP WMI Interface (hpqwmi) - Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. - C:\Program Files\HPQ\shared\hpqwmi.exe
O23 - Service: InstallDriver Table Manager (IDriverT) - Macrovision Corporation - C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Driver\11\Intel 32\IDriverT.exe
O23 - Service: iPod Service - Apple Inc. - C:\Program Files\iPod\bin\iPodService.exe
O23 - Service: Remote Packet Capture Protocol v.0 (experimental) (rpcapd) - CACE Technologies - C:\Program Files\WinPcap\rpcapd.exe
O23 - Service: VMware Authorization Service (VMAuthdService) - VMware, Inc. - C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmware-authd.exe
O23 - Service: VMware DHCP Service (VMnetDHCP) - VMware, Inc. - C:\WINDOWS\system32\vmnetdhcp.exe
O23 - Service: VMware Virtual Mount Manager Extended (vmount2) - VMware, Inc. - C:\Program Files\Common Files\VMware\VMware Virtual Image Editing\vmount2.exe
O23 - Service: VMware Registration Service (vmserverdWin32) - VMware, Inc. - C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Server\vmserverdWin32.exe
O23 - Service: VMware NAT Service - VMware, Inc. - C:\WINDOWS\system32\vmnat.exe
O23 - Service: TrueVector Internet Monitor (vsmon) - Zone Labs, LLC - C:\WINDOWS\system32\ZoneLabs\vsmon.exe
O24 - Desktop Component 0: (no name) - (no file)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Output from Rootkit revealer:
HKLM\SECURITY\Policy\Secrets\SAC*   2/25/2006 10:52 PM   0 bytes   Key name contains embedded nulls (*)
HKLM\SECURITY\Policy\Secrets\SAI*   2/25/2006 10:52 PM   0 bytes   Key name contains embedded nulls (*)
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\Installer\Products\32418F9EE1126B64A90E8365B85CFCF6\ProductName   4/25/2006 12:36 PM   58 bytes   Data mismatch between Windows API and raw hive data.
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\{E9F81423-211E-46B6-9AE0-38568BC5CF6F}\DisplayName   4/25/2006 12:41 PM   58 bytes   Data mismatch between Windows API and raw hive data.
HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\sptd\Cfg   11/21/2006 3:11 PM   0 bytes   Access is denied.
HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\vax347s\Config\jdgg40   4/25/2006 1:07 PM   0 bytes   Hidden from Windows API.
C:\System Volume Information\_restore{801E456B-4296-4E1C-8413-4B35C6DA30F8}\RP458\A0070109.RDB   6/26/2007 11:41 PM   2.82 MB   Visible in directory index, but not Windows API or MFT.


Welcome to any/all suggestions.  About to pick up an external HDD and backup my files and reinstall, seriously.  I may even get rid of windows altogether and go straight Ubuntu Linux.

John

Dave,
     I ended up having to run sfc /scanonce to run at boot, and nothing was found.  The error still remains... 

What to do now?  I will try HJT and Rk-Revealer and see what that comes up with.  It's really getting annoying now.  Thinking about just doing a re-install, I've already built a new XP with nLite and waiting to drop the bomb.

John

Sorry it took so long to reply, I will try the recommendation listed.  I was out of town on business for a few days.  I willpost my results tomorrow.

As for the cause of the error, it happens only on right-click in blank space on the desktop.  It references shell32.dll when I review the error logs.

As I said before, I will try the sfc /scannow tomorrow...  Need sleep...

Cheers, John

Okay, so I was trying to right-click on my desktop to create a new text document and my screen disappeared.  A couple seconds later the Dr. Watson Postmortem Debugger popped up.  I had to Ctrl-Alt-Del and run taskman to kill drwatson32.  That brought my desktop back.  If I try again, the same things happen, repeated numerous times, mostly on accident.

Things I've tried:
1.  Disk Cleanup
2.  Spyware search (Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware, SuperAnti-Spyware, and Windows Defender)
3.  Antivirus from boot (AVG and Avast)
4.  Disk Defragmentation (Windows Defrag and Contig)
5.  System Restore (from last time I knew for sure it worked)
6.  Killed all network connections, and it still happened
7.  Killed all unnecessary apps in taskman, and it still happened
8.  Rebooted multiple times
9.  Yelled at machine until I felt better...  DIDN'T HELP AT ALL!!!!! 

Any other suggestions???   
 
John

Have you tried unplugging/replugging the wireless router.  When you do this, the router must be unplugged for at least 10 seconds.  After that, reboot your windows machine and all should be ok.  If not, repost what you see.

John