Senko

Hey there,

1st off, sorry if this seems a bit 'not very WinXP' involved but this kinda influences a lot of topics as I'm going to attempt to explain;

Right, I'm using AVG 7.5 Anti Virus scanner ( free edition ) to keep my computer Virus free, unfortunetly, I've had a problem with my computer freezing up when it starts scanning certain files, I've already noted down the majority of files and they mainly consist of DLL's.

The freeze will will be a momentary 3-5 second freeze to where everything, even the mouse cursor will freeze in place, followed by unfreezing for about 5-10 seconds. This will happen over and over again, about 5-10 times before getting a BSOD stating nothing else except a 0x000000F4 error, followed by a few more numbers. I did a quick google for the mentioned error and it seems to go on about corrupt diskspace something or rather or simply bad RAM.

However, I find it weird that it's just a few files that seem to trigger this error, also note that if I were to click on the file in explorer, the same freeze will occur, but I'm mainly suspecting that it's AVG's fault, because it's probably auto-scanning it as soon as I click it.

I succesfully removed some of the files causing this freeze-up via CMD, and deleting them manually, as right clicking on these files would just cause a freeze up and I wouldn't be able to delete them.

The following files have caused this so far :

'surf_untildeath.cache' in my cstrike\maps\soundcache, a rather seemingly harmless file, which is produced when I launched the map surf_untildeath in Counter-Strike: Source, I removed this file as I had no need for playing the map anyway.

'client.dll', located in my Mods folder in my Steam directory, again, this was involved in some 3rd party mod I no longer played so I deleted it.

I've had problems with sound and Steam, gotten the error datacache.dll with certain mods but was able to bypass it by playing the games with -nosound enabled, but yeah, that's sort of off-topic.

now, for the one that I can't really delete;

'Windows\I386\ntdll.dll'

I already know that ntdll.dll can cause serious problems if removed, and that it's a part of Windows itself, but I've experianced multiple problems and crashes because of this file.

An example is Winamp, this will happen at any given totally random moment, that I would attempt to start Winamp, and it would fail on load giving an error and blaming ntdll.dll, if I were to attempt to start Winamp again, it would state the same, the only work-around I found that didn't involve touching ntdll.dll, would be to uninstall Winamp, and reinstall it. Now you might jump to conclusions about me having corrupt plugins for Winamp but I can assure you I have no such things.

As for other examples of ntdll.dll causing crashes, I can't quite remember what because this is an error that has plagued me for well over 3 months now, but it doesn't occur very often.

As for the other DLL's that caused my computer to freeze up, they were mainly associated with games and mods, but due to common sense I can safely say that 99% of them were not infected by anything that can be considered a virus, or anything that a virus scanner should pick up.

So yeah, what I'm trying to find out ultimately is,

Why is my AVG causing my computer to freeze up giving an 0X000000F4 error when scanning these .DLL's/Files ?, Also note that I've scanned about 80% of my harddrive so far so there might be another file going to cause this freeze up but I am yet to reach that far in my scans.

And, is there a 110% legit/working/safe ntdll.dll replacement for me out there on the internet ?

On a sidenote - has anyone seen a fix for the cursed datacache.dll error with HL2 ? - I'm forced to run Smod: Tactical with -nosound as everytime I load a map it crashes. It seems sound involved, as it crashes on next event sound, but I've already tried all DiaxSoundAccel's and Reinstalling / Using different sound cards.

On a sidesidenote - I recently uninstalled AVG in order to install a program, which AVG INSISTED on was a Trojan of sorts, but I knew it was safe, so I uninstalled AVG which well, led to a day of restoring my computer. Following the reboot after AVG was uninstalled, I would reach my login screen and hit enter and see a black screen followed by my harddrive going crazy and then a BSOD, this happened a few times and I remember doing something in Safe Mode, I had to delete some system boot file and it worked again. Which all leads me to believe that mabey AVG isn't the right program for me ?... Well, incase anyones wondering the above mentioned freezes happened prior this uninstall.

Well, if I can provide you with any further information required to investigate the matter, kindly request so, looking forward to a reply, even if it won't be of any help ! =D.

Thanx in advance,
Senko