slow laptop

Got a laptop running real slow... I've cleaned it of adware/spyware with adaware and spybot and hi-jackthis. I have discovered however that there are at least hundreds of 0 byte dll files in the windows directory. at least 400-500 of them start with add..... I'm trying to boot now with Ultimate boot cd to access them.... I've tried full windows/safemode and a floppy boot and everytime you try to access the directory it slows to a crawl...Even dir takes 1 to 2 full seconds PER FILE to display.... Oh this is running windows 98se

It is getting harder and harder to support 98 now and until some recent work reminded me I had forgotten that it is acceptable or even anticipated to reinstall the OS.
Certainly with Microsoft Windows ME and anything before that.(Don't get me started about NT4)

You can still patch the thing until June of this year using Windows update.

If you need your data files and cannot pull the drive to make a back up elsewhere then reinstall the OS after you rename the original Windows folder .old or whatever. This would be to save your data files only of course after that delete partitions and start fresh.

I do remember Windows 98 was much better at not trampling data files the way 95 would.

I've had the same type of problem with WinME and it's problem with producing 19 thousand oem####.inf files in the inf directory. I just booted to DOS and went in and did a "del oem0*.inf" or something like that. I'd take a look at a clean 98 install and see if there are other dll files that match add*.dll if there isn't I'd probably try the same thing I did with the INFs. Now it took nearly 18 hours to delete all the infs on one machine but once it had and I ran a defrag, it was fine afterwards...

Yeah it is a whole bunch of different names and all empty ( 0bytes ) files.... first was add and then app then atl etc... all created in december 2005 or January 2006. I'm gonna try deleting them first.... Dos bogs down so I am deleting them with UBCD for windows.... Let you know how things works....

chainwash this is a customers computer and he wants us to save what we can and from past experience I know installing to a new directory can be a royal pain with win98.... And whether it's updateable or not it's the customers decision to upgrade or not.... we can't do it for free and many won't pay the big pricetag of a new MS os. And we can't just turn people away as that is a lot of our business.... win98 is still EXTREMELY popular ( well at least numerous ) around here...

Are they located in the windows dir or the windows/system dir Shard?

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Originally Posted by geoscomp

Are they located in the windows dir or the windows/system dir Shard?

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windows

Oh and some of them have 0 byte exe files that match the dll name....

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chainwash this is a customers computer and he wants us to save what we can and from past experience I know installing to a new directory can be a royal pain with win98.... And whether it's updateable or not it's the customers decision to upgrade or not.... we can't do it for free and many won't pay the big pricetag of a new MS os. And we can't just turn people away as that is a lot of our business.... win98 is still EXTREMELY popular ( well at least numerous ) around here...

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I agree with what you say and I never turn customers away, we take everyones money. I actually had someone with Windows 3.1 last fall and I was lucky enough to have the manual to correct the printer problem they were having. Dip switch on the back of the printer had been flipped by someone, anyway....

It's just the hours spent trying to save an install that is badly messed up will probably take more time than a fresh install and a bulk data copy. Frankly I have more confidence in a fresh install than a salvaged install. Sure don't want the customer back because some app/program got whacked in the process.

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Originally Posted by chainwash

I agree with what you say and I never turn customers away, we take everyones money. I actually had someone with Windows 3.1 last fall and I was lucky enough to have the manual to correct the printer problem they were having. Dip switch on the back of the printer had been flipped by someone, anyway....

It's just the hours spent trying to save an install that is badly messed up will probably take more time than a fresh install and a bulk data copy. Frankly I have more confidence in a fresh install than a salvaged install. Sure don't want the customer back because some app/program got whacked in the process.

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understand and agree.... this was his decision.... he doesn't want to have to reinstall all his stuff...

15200 files removed all of 0bytes 99.9% dll files... still takes 5-10 minutes to boot.... full or safe mode....

Well, there are a number of viruses that will do this (create 0 byte files) including worm.explorezip, vbs_newlove.a, W32/Sober.AD-mm, etc. etc. etc. Sometimes they create 0 byte files, and sometimes they destroy other files and leave the 0 byte ones in their place. The odd prefix to these is strange though. I guess I would try a manual, safe mode deletion. I know it will take time, but it is guaranteed to get them all. You could probably write a batch file to do it, but that would take the same amount of time. (have you scanned with a boot antivirus/spyware disk yet?)

have you defragged since removing them?

yeah there was several prefixes followed by a, aa , ab, etc.... I did manually delete them with UBCD and I also ran a virus scan from it ( not completely up to date though ), I also ran adaware /spybot from safe mode and removed stuff, havent' defragged yet but I'm finding more ( same pattern ) in windows\system now.... don't know if they were there before or not.