Solved Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

[RoddyBoy]

Okay, running Vista Home Premium x32...

I turn on my Toshiba Laptop A305D-S6848 and I get the message that BOTH Windows Defender User Interface and Toshiba's Service Station have stopped working and need to close. It says it's checking for solutions (finds none of course)

In addition when I go to use the flash cards it says Toshiba Flash CArds has stopped working shuts them down too. I read to go into the control panel and Performance Info & tools to fix that, but doing tells me that "Windows Explorer has stopped working" and it restarts, but won't let me access the Performance....

Oh, and I also can't open up any picture files with windows photo gallery because that also causes explorer to restart. I HAD fixed that, but now it's doing it again... and no, the images are not corrupted.

I thought maybe I had a virus or something, but norton found nothing, and neither did adaware. I would run Defender, but it won't work... it just gives me the user interface message and crashes.

 

[SuperFuzz]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

Okay, running Vista Home Premium x32...

I turn on my Toshiba Laptop A305D-S6848 and I get the message that BOTH Windows Defender User Interface and Toshiba's Service Station have stopped working and need to close. It says it's checking for solutions (finds none of course)

In addition when I go to use the flash cards it says Toshiba Flash CArds has stopped working shuts them down too. I read to go into the control panel and Performance Info & tools to fix that, but doing tells me that "Windows Explorer has stopped working" and it restarts, but won't let me access the Performance....

Oh, and I also can't open up any picture files with windows photo gallery because that also causes explorer to restart. I HAD fixed that, but now it's doing it again... and no, the images are not corrupted.

I thought maybe I had a virus or something, but norton found nothing, and neither did adaware. I would run Defender, but it won't work... it just gives me the user interface message and crashes.

It sounds like 2 key possibilities to me. Corrupted system files or faulty memory. I would try booting from your windows installation disk and running a windows repair. (Hopefully Toshiba included an actual windows disk and not just a system restore disk) If that doesn't resolve the issue, try running memtest to verify the integrity of your RAM. If the windows repair doesn't resolve it and memtest says your memory is fine, holler back and we'll do some more digging.

 

[RoddyBoy]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

Okay, running Vista Home Premium x32...

I turn on my Toshiba Laptop A305D-S6848 and I get the message that BOTH Windows Defender User Interface and Toshiba's Service Station have stopped working and need to close. It says it's checking for solutions (finds none of course)

In addition when I go to use the flash cards it says Toshiba Flash CArds has stopped working shuts them down too. I read to go into the control panel and Performance Info & tools to fix that, but doing tells me that "Windows Explorer has stopped working" and it restarts, but won't let me access the Performance....

Oh, and I also can't open up any picture files with windows photo gallery because that also causes explorer to restart. I HAD fixed that, but now it's doing it again... and no, the images are not corrupted.

I thought maybe I had a virus or something, but norton found nothing, and neither did adaware. I would run Defender, but it won't work... it just gives me the user interface message and crashes.

It sounds like 2 key possibilities to me. Corrupted system files or faulty memory. I would try booting from your windows installation disk and running a windows repair. (Hopefully Toshiba included an actual windows disk and not just a system restore disk) If that doesn't resolve the issue, try running memtest to verify the integrity of your RAM. If the windows repair doesn't resolve it and memtest says your memory is fine, holler back and we'll do some more digging.

I must be stupid or something... but I can't get the memtest to work for me. Followed the directions, just not working for me... And no, Toshiba just game me a restoration disk, not a separate one for Windows... I can't believe I am going to have to reinstall everything! D*mn It!

 

[Brink]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

Hello RoddyBoy, and welcome to Vista Forums.

Did you burn the Memtest ISO to a DVD using a ISO burner such a ImgBurn? I found that using option 3 with MemTest worked best for me instead of the others. It may for you as well.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[SuperFuzz]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

Okay, running Vista Home Premium x32...

I turn on my Toshiba Laptop A305D-S6848 and I get the message that BOTH Windows Defender User Interface and Toshiba's Service Station have stopped working and need to close. It says it's checking for solutions (finds none of course)

In addition when I go to use the flash cards it says Toshiba Flash CArds has stopped working shuts them down too. I read to go into the control panel and Performance Info & tools to fix that, but doing tells me that "Windows Explorer has stopped working" and it restarts, but won't let me access the Performance....

Oh, and I also can't open up any picture files with windows photo gallery because that also causes explorer to restart. I HAD fixed that, but now it's doing it again... and no, the images are not corrupted.

I thought maybe I had a virus or something, but norton found nothing, and neither did adaware. I would run Defender, but it won't work... it just gives me the user interface message and crashes.

It sounds like 2 key possibilities to me. Corrupted system files or faulty memory. I would try booting from your windows installation disk and running a windows repair. (Hopefully Toshiba included an actual windows disk and not just a system restore disk) If that doesn't resolve the issue, try running memtest to verify the integrity of your RAM. If the windows repair doesn't resolve it and memtest says your memory is fine, holler back and we'll do some more digging.

I must be stupid or something... but I can't get the memtest to work for me. Followed the directions, just not working for me... And no, Toshiba just game me a restoration disk, not a separate one for Windows... I can't believe I am going to have to reinstall everything! D*mn It!

Roddy, if you get memtest working using Brink's suggestion and your memory checks out okay, don't give up on trying to run a windows repair. If you have a friend who has Vista x32, you can borrow their installation disk to run a repair. The only time the key comes into play is when doing an OS install, so you can use any Vista x32 disk to access and run the utilities. If it doesn't resolve the issue, just be sure to use your own system restore disk to re-install windows or your pal (and MS) might get a little upset.

 

[H2SO4]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

If you run WERCON, you may see entries (via "history" on the left) for the explorer.exe crash and all the other recent breakdowns. The "appcrash" data that is recorded there might be useful. If you paste it here someone might be able to tell you why those processes might be crashing.

FWIW, I don't disagree with memtest and that strategy, but given that your crashes occur in very specific places, it's just as likely to be a software issue. Bad RAM tends to manifest itself more as a seemingly random collection of different crashes - whatever was being written to the bad memory at the time.

 

[RoddyBoy]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

I called Toshiba... They told me somehow Windows got corrupted... So, I did a complete reinstall. It's running better than when I took it out of the box.

Thanks for all the suggestions though. If I have any problems in future (lmao... "if") I'll know where to turn.

 

[RoddyBoy]

re: Defender... Flash Cards... Explorer... Performance Info & Tools...

It sounds like 2 key possibilities to me. Corrupted system files or faulty memory. I would try booting from your windows installation disk and running a windows repair. (Hopefully Toshiba included an actual windows disk and not just a system restore disk) If that doesn't resolve the issue, try running memtest to verify the integrity of your RAM. If the windows repair doesn't resolve it and memtest says your memory is fine, holler back and we'll do some more digging.

I must be stupid or something... but I can't get the memtest to work for me. Followed the directions, just not working for me... And no, Toshiba just game me a restoration disk, not a separate one for Windows... I can't believe I am going to have to reinstall everything! D*mn It!

Roddy, if you get memtest working using Brink's suggestion and your memory checks out okay, don't give up on trying to run a windows repair. If you have a friend who has Vista x32, you can borrow their installation disk to run a repair. The only time the key comes into play is when doing an OS install, so you can use any Vista x32 disk to access and run the utilities. If it doesn't resolve the issue, just be sure to use your own system restore disk to re-install windows or your pal (and MS) might get a little upset.

Thanks a lot. I just did a system restore. I turned it on and got another new error... TSS.exe... and gave up. 2 hours later it was all reinstalled. Now comes the fun part... Reinstalling all the programs. I put photoshop and Golive back on, and noticed one thing right away. My photoshop was running horrible before. One day it just started going at a snails pace for no reason. Now it sings. So, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

 

[SuperFuzz]

I must be stupid or something... but I can't get the memtest to work for me. Followed the directions, just not working for me... And no, Toshiba just game me a restoration disk, not a separate one for Windows... I can't believe I am going to have to reinstall everything! D*mn It!

Roddy, if you get memtest working using Brink's suggestion and your memory checks out okay, don't give up on trying to run a windows repair. If you have a friend who has Vista x32, you can borrow their installation disk to run a repair. The only time the key comes into play is when doing an OS install, so you can use any Vista x32 disk to access and run the utilities. If it doesn't resolve the issue, just be sure to use your own system restore disk to re-install windows or your pal (and MS) might get a little upset.

Thanks a lot. I just did a system restore. I turned it on and got another new error... TSS.exe... and gave up. 2 hours later it was all reinstalled. Now comes the fun part... Reinstalling all the programs. I put photoshop and Golive back on, and noticed one thing right away. My photoshop was running horrible before. One day it just started going at a snails pace for no reason. Now it sings. So, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

I take it you couldn't talk anyone into parting with their Vista disk so you could use the utilities and run a windows repair? Oh well, probably better starting fresh. With Win 3.1 through XP, a format and re-install of windows every 6 months to a year was almost a prerequisite to maintain performance. Due to memory holes and the swap files constantly growing, windows performance would progressively get worse as time went on. I think they have mostly resolved that with Vista and Win7, but things still don't always work like they are supposed to. Bugs in the code can cause random errors during installation, causing some installations to be... well buggy, and others to be stable.

My previous Vista install was a nightmare and I was having problems getting some programs to run and and any game with Securom protection was about impossible to launch. Bought a new 1 TB HD recently and did a fresh install of Vista x64 on the 1TB HD and Vista x32 on the original HD. Everything works flawlessly this time and all Securom games launch and run perfectly. Same copy of Vista, same software installed as before, same hardware (sans the extra HD), but it works great this time. *shrugs*. Hopefully your experience will be the same and the hours put into the fresh install will be worth it!

 

[RoddyBoy]

Roddy, if you get memtest working using Brink's suggestion and your memory checks out okay, don't give up on trying to run a windows repair. If you have a friend who has Vista x32, you can borrow their installation disk to run a repair. The only time the key comes into play is when doing an OS install, so you can use any Vista x32 disk to access and run the utilities. If it doesn't resolve the issue, just be sure to use your own system restore disk to re-install windows or your pal (and MS) might get a little upset.

Thanks a lot. I just did a system restore. I turned it on and got another new error... TSS.exe... and gave up. 2 hours later it was all reinstalled. Now comes the fun part... Reinstalling all the programs. I put photoshop and Golive back on, and noticed one thing right away. My photoshop was running horrible before. One day it just started going at a snails pace for no reason. Now it sings. So, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

I take it you couldn't talk anyone into parting with their Vista disk so you could use the utilities and run a windows repair? Oh well, probably better starting fresh. With Win 3.1 through XP, a format and re-install of windows every 6 months to a year was almost a prerequisite to maintain performance. Due to memory holes and the swap files constantly growing, windows performance would progressively get worse as time went on. I think they have mostly resolved that with Vista and Win7, but things still don't always work like they are supposed to. Bugs in the code can cause random errors during installation, causing some installations to be... well buggy, and others to be stable.

My previous Vista install was a nightmare and I was having problems getting some programs to run and and any game with Securom protection was about impossible to launch. Bought a new 1 TB HD recently and did a fresh install of Vista x64 on the 1TB HD and Vista x32 on the original HD. Everything works flawlessly this time and all Securom games launch and run perfectly. Same copy of Vista, same software installed as before, same hardware (sans the extra HD), but it works great this time. *shrugs*. Hopefully your experience will be the same and the hours put into the fresh install will be worth it!

NO, it wasn't worth it! Defender still crashes, I can't access performance menu, and now my email campaign program doesn't work. I also can't open pictures. This really sucks.

 

[SuperFuzz]

Thanks a lot. I just did a system restore. I turned it on and got another new error... TSS.exe... and gave up. 2 hours later it was all reinstalled. Now comes the fun part... Reinstalling all the programs. I put photoshop and Golive back on, and noticed one thing right away. My photoshop was running horrible before. One day it just started going at a snails pace for no reason. Now it sings. So, maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

I take it you couldn't talk anyone into parting with their Vista disk so you could use the utilities and run a windows repair? Oh well, probably better starting fresh. With Win 3.1 through XP, a format and re-install of windows every 6 months to a year was almost a prerequisite to maintain performance. Due to memory holes and the swap files constantly growing, windows performance would progressively get worse as time went on. I think they have mostly resolved that with Vista and Win7, but things still don't always work like they are supposed to. Bugs in the code can cause random errors during installation, causing some installations to be... well buggy, and others to be stable.

My previous Vista install was a nightmare and I was having problems getting some programs to run and and any game with Securom protection was about impossible to launch. Bought a new 1 TB HD recently and did a fresh install of Vista x64 on the 1TB HD and Vista x32 on the original HD. Everything works flawlessly this time and all Securom games launch and run perfectly. Same copy of Vista, same software installed as before, same hardware (sans the extra HD), but it works great this time. *shrugs*. Hopefully your experience will be the same and the hours put into the fresh install will be worth it!

NO, it wasn't worth it! Defender still crashes, I can't access performance menu, and now my email campaign program doesn't work. I also can't open pictures. This really sucks.

This is really sounding more like a hardware issue to me since you are having problems on a new install. One question though, did you format before running the restore, or just install over the top of the original windows installation. If not, you might try that if my next suggestions don't resolve the issue, so you have a clean installation.

First, try running OSCheck to look for problems with your installation and repairing them if it finds errors. I'd also try running DiskCheckup to look for physical problems with your hard drive. If both of those check out, be sure you update all drivers and install all software patches for your programs. If it is still having problems after all of that, I would seriously suspect a RAM fault or other hardware issue. If your laptop is still under warranty, I'd let Toshiba deal with it. If not, start with memtest, as faulty RAM would be the largest suspect at that point.

Good luck man!

 

[RoddyBoy]

I take it you couldn't talk anyone into parting with their Vista disk so you could use the utilities and run a windows repair? Oh well, probably better starting fresh. With Win 3.1 through XP, a format and re-install of windows every 6 months to a year was almost a prerequisite to maintain performance. Due to memory holes and the swap files constantly growing, windows performance would progressively get worse as time went on. I think they have mostly resolved that with Vista and Win7, but things still don't always work like they are supposed to. Bugs in the code can cause random errors during installation, causing some installations to be... well buggy, and others to be stable.

My previous Vista install was a nightmare and I was having problems getting some programs to run and and any game with Securom protection was about impossible to launch. Bought a new 1 TB HD recently and did a fresh install of Vista x64 on the 1TB HD and Vista x32 on the original HD. Everything works flawlessly this time and all Securom games launch and run perfectly. Same copy of Vista, same software installed as before, same hardware (sans the extra HD), but it works great this time. *shrugs*. Hopefully your experience will be the same and the hours put into the fresh install will be worth it!

NO, it wasn't worth it! Defender still crashes, I can't access performance menu, and now my email campaign program doesn't work. I also can't open pictures. This really sucks.

This is really sounding more like a hardware issue to me since you are having problems on a new install. One question though, did you format before running the restore, or just install over the top of the original windows installation. If not, you might try that if my next suggestions don't resolve the issue, so you have a clean installation.

First, try running OSCheck to look for problems with your installation and repairing them if it finds errors. I'd also try running DiskCheckup to look for physical problems with your hard drive. If both of those check out, be sure you update all drivers and install all software patches for your programs. If it is still having problems after all of that, I would seriously suspect a RAM fault or other hardware issue. If your laptop is still under warranty, I'd let Toshiba deal with it. If not, start with memtest, as faulty RAM would be the largest suspect at that point.

Good luck man!

I just inserted the disk and did the restore. It wiped out everything though... all my pictures, music, programs... Is that what you mean?

 

[SuperFuzz]

It sounds like it probably did a format as part of the setup process since your files are all gone. It's recommended if you want to be sure you are getting a full format and clean install to manually format, but it does sound like your system restore disk probably did a format as part of the setup process.

I would proceed with the utilities I suggested and see if they find problems with your operating system installation and hard disk and go from there.

 

[RoddyBoy]

It sounds like it probably did a format as part of the setup process since your files are all gone. It's recommended if you want to be sure you are getting a full format and clean install to manually format, but it does sound like your system restore disk probably did a format as part of the setup process.

I would proceed with the utilities I suggested and see if they find problems with your operating system installation and hard disk and go from there.

Well... I'm doing another recovery... Last time I selected the "restore factory settings" option... This time I told it to just erase the hard disk.... 30 minutes down, 12 hours to go. Definitely doing something different; last time the whole process took under 3 hours.

I'm also ran a scan on my portable hard drive on my other pc just to make sure there is nothing on it... but it's clean... so there's no bugs or anthing.

What I think I'm going to do is just finish with what it's doing now... install all the updates (again) and check out toshiba's website to get any new drivers... Then if it does it again I'll just send it in to have them fix it.

Thanks for all the help. Oh... I did try those programs you suggested. One came up clean and the other one told me there were too many files to scan... I don't know...

I did do a registry cleaner that they suggest here and it found 119 errors in my registry... It only cleaned 15 of them... I wonder if that could be it?

At any rate, it's wiping every last thing off it now. Hopefully this will fix it.