I had a crash about 2 weeks ago and since then Ive had problems with Generic Host 32. The services using this facility when the problem occurs are services.exe and svchost.exe, both of which are vulnerable to Trojans. Ive done about 20 scans of the computer with 4 or 5 utilities and as far as these facilities are concerned I have no bugs on the machine. This using is Spybot, Truesword4, CS Sweeper, Counter Spy another couple I forget. And it just happened again! So I have about 5 mins before my internet connection will hang.

Both services.exe and svchost.exe are Micro$oft files, couldn't I just replace the files that I have now, irrespective of why the problem has occurred, with the default files that are created initially or would there be a problem doing this because of registry
issues???

I think it is a system error rather than a bug because I haven't been naughty recently, internet wise I've been on UK420, RTS, BBC News and Sport, Fantasy League and Tiscali home site. I have 70% of time recently just been finishing Obvilion and it never hangs Oblivion if Ive not made any attempt to log on. But if I forget and have the internet connected in background then it sometime, not always, will hang Oblivion. It always hangs if it occurs but it doesn't always occur, is what I mean, the problem with Generic Host. Anyhoo..........



Microsoft has a nightmare of solutions to the plethora of things that can cause this and the links to downloads are as usual difficult to follow to make sure your downloading the correct solution. Better post this now whilst I can then reboot. The reason I think it is system error rather than virus or Trojan is that sometimes it happens after 10 mins but sometimes it doesn't happen for hours???

Gotta reboot now, hope this will post

[
I really do admire people who have toughed it out and got familiar with Linux. I never wanted one of these new fangled machines purely because of my initial reaction and knowledge of the basic MS-DOS which I could see was a nightmare.
But my accident and need and the fact I saw people using Windows (2nd Ed) without major problems and almost everything is written for Windows platform I went fookin windows in 2002. I wanted an Apple but at this time, I need a laptop because of disability to stand on side by my bedside, ...at this time 2002, the money that I had to spend meant that for a comparable Apple laptop to the £450 i spent on the Thinkpad and accessories I started with, would have cost over a grand and I just didn't want to afford that much. God how I wish I had dug deep. Thats by way of an apology for not using Linux, I know I should make the effort but............... lazzzzzzzzzzyyyyyyy
]

Hi Hir,

I run SuSE on a Thinkpad and it's a breeze mate. The latest version is a doddle to install and if there are any M$ programs you need to use then WINE will work for most of them. If not there's always VMware which is free now.

If you want to make the move to Linux I'm more than happy to offer some support while you make the transition. As I'm sure are many of the other happy Linux users here

Felix.

If you're sure that it's not an infection of any kind that's causing this, and you've got all the latest patches and updates (do this manually, don't just rely on the automatic updater - you can also use WindizUpdate with FireFox to check/update your system) then you may be suffering from a corrupted Winsock.

See here for details on how to check/fix it.

congrats hir that was your 6700 post. wow. im a long time lurker.

i lost my sound icon and the file sndvol32.exe. trying to fix it still. anyway, if you have a os disc you can replace the possibly corrupted files form the cd. dyslexia is a new problem for me. ha.

in fact if you have the sndvol32.exe file on your cd and can email it to me. jk no really. no.\

have a pc that i installed ubuntu 7.4. in three months i have music, games but no lan connection.

but this is about your prob. oh, i severely clip winxp before i lost the file and added all the winxp components back but didnt give me the file and the emachine only has restore disc and i cant find the file.

usually, this kind of shit makes me want to strangle b gates. not really just joking. if homeland is listening. but now i just forgive gates. he know everything about us anyway, why fignt. my machine seems to load faster and surf faster since i became a softie compliant child.

anyway, just thought that i would commiserate with you. god bless.\
gen131

I agree with Scribble, it sounds like something has corrupted something in the networking aspect of your sys.

What type of internet connection are you using? dial up? cable?

The first thing you need to do, if you have not, is run scandisk ( or better yet Nortons Disk Doctor) and see what happens. Don't fixate on the O/S right away as a bad sector or cross linked files or any number of other things on ur hdrive could cause this. If you have Norton system works it has a diagnostic tool that works pretty darn good for some things. It is worth running if you have it. I run it on everything just cause.

One of the things I often do early in the trouble shooting process is physically remove all devices except the keyboard from the system. First only external devices, and if the problem continues, then all non-required internal devices. If it continues I will boot into safe mode and remove all non critical devices from the device manager. Reboot the machine and let it start adding things back, reboot and add the missing internals, reboot and add the missing externals. Keep in mind though that if you are doing prolonged trouble shooting that requires many reboots the process is much faster without all those non-required internals and externals.

anyway keep us updated and we will work though it.

Still 'infected'.


Scribble, no I am by no means certain it isn't a bug, just doesn't seem like one, too random in its' occurance. The link you gave me didn't list the message i'm getting so didn't try it.

Okay, duel partition so I can play games. Will it, I want a gaurentte here, take me no more than a year to get familiar with Ubuntu as when windows is working I feel quite capable and want to be that capable in Linux. I really really do hate windoze but got used to dealing, largly, with its' incompetences. However if I have to reboot then it will be third time in 4 months which is just fookin crazy.

I'll leave the Ubuntu advice to others as they are more familiar with that distro than myself but should you chose to go with SuSE I'd recommend one of the Dummies books SuSE 10.x for Dummies, my dad found it very useful when first switching over to Linux from Windows.

Whichever distro you go with might I suggest the KDE desktop as you may find that the most 'Windows' like of the various desktops available. I'm not belittling the Gnome desktop in any way, it's a fine desktop.

Shouldn't take more than a couple of months to be able to do most things in Linux that you were previously doing in windows.

I'm sure Ubuntu has something similar but there are complete guides to installing SuSE with step by step screenshots on the openSuSE website along with many other guides and howto's.

Good luck,
Felix.

DAD!

You've put me right off now....

Try these:


Here

And here.

And here.

And:





e²a: I run Ubuntu & Debian on a few of my PC's - I'll be more than happy to answer any questions about any difficulties you may have with it.

what's linux like for wireless networking support now ? last I heard it was a total pain in the arris to set up that's why I didn't bother looking into it any further.

Depends on the wireless chipset that your card uses - the situation is much improved these days, though.

If your card has an Atheros, Ralink or Intel chipset especially - it will almost certainly work right 'out of the box', other manufacturers, like Broadcom or a few cheapo Chum Wa no-names will probably be more problematic.

This is not Linux's fault, though - it's some of the manufacturers' faults for not releasing the specs of the chips so that people don't have to tediously reverse-engineer them to get them working.

You can get the vast majority of even the problematic ones working by using the Windows drivers under Linux, using ndiswrapper, which 'wraps' the Windows driver and allows it to be used by Linux - it's far from ideal, but it works.

I have a selection of wireless cards, all of which work perfectly under Linux.

a card, do you mean like a pci card or something ?


I've just got a little belkin USB wireless reciever thingy and a D-link router, no card as such .

PCI wireless card/USB wirless 'card' - same thing really - they both use the same kinds of wireless chipsets, it's just the interface to the computer that's different - one's PCI and the other's USB.

As Scribble says it's pretty much a breeze these days. I have a Cisco A/B/G card and once you've downloaded the right drivers your away.

the other thing is if I switch to linux I'm gonna need a distro that'll allow me to run Softimage|XSI , the blurb on the box says I can use the following : Red Hat Enterprise version 4 kernel 2.6.9, Fedora Project Core 3 kernel 2.6.9 - 1.667smp or Novell Suse linux 9.3 .

I don't know if I can use any other distro's it's all a bit gibberish to me to be honest, I'm guessing the ones listed above are all commercial packages, that's the thing that puts me off linux- so many different versions I don't know what to go for.


I'm gonna have to get used to Linux sooner or later though because once WinXP outlives it's use by date there's no way in hell I'm moving to vista.

I'm personally not a big fan of Red Hat but that's purely a personal dislike for the way they make KDE look and the way they have changed some of the commands, eg starting daemons is often done 'Service httpd start' rather than /etc/init.d/hhtpd start.

A minor thing and certainly don't let that put you off. Scribble can tell you how Ubuntu & Debian do things.

Unfortunately, I don't think that Sofimage/XSI is supported under Ubuntu - it certainly hasn't been in the past, but I don't know if that situation may be changed with the release of Edgy & now Gutsy, and later releases of SI/XSI.

You could always consider running SuSE or CentOS (which is RedHat, basically, but totally free and recompiled from the RH source code) for your 3D imaging needs.



e²a: And Fedora Core, of course is another completely free distro that's based on the RedHat source code.

It's not that confusing with the situation with Linux distros, you know - there are seemingly billions of them out there - but when you actually look into it, they are pretty much based on a handful of 'core' distributions, mainly Debian, RedHat & Slackware.

I was kind of considering Suse, not that I'd looked into it in any great depth but I remember reading somewhere that it was one of the more user friendly packages.

IMO - Ubuntu is wonderfully user friendly.

There is a bit of a snobbery from some of the old-time, 'advanced' Linux crowd that Ubuntu is a bit lame, but I reckon that's just an expression of their dislike that Linux has been a bit 'de-eliteified' by the release of such an easy-to-install & use distro. To me, it's just as solid as Debian, which it's based on, and the Ubuntu crowd have made wonderful strides in making it user-friendly and very usable.

Mind you, for a server or a big-iron, I personally wouldn't use Ubuntu, which is a fine desktop distro - I'd preferentially use Debian or CentOS.

Well if he can get to grips with it then I'd say pretty much anyone can.

SuSE is a good solid distro Lizard and now Novel have sold their soul to M$ we can expect to see it start gobbling up resources like another well known OS. Seriously though there are some good features in SuSE, Yast is the equivalent of control panel in Windows and gives the same functionality configuring hardware, installing and removing software, controlling services (Daemons in our world), adding users, etc, etc.

Installing SuSE with KDE would provide a very similar environment to Windows.