Cable Internet and Router..can it cause Windows Explorer to crash?

Question

The computer seemed to function just fine, but ever since I hooked cable internet up to it, the computer has become unstable. There is a router in my apartment hooked up in the apartment. Windows explorer crashes often and i am clueless as to what to do.

Answer 1

Three probable reasons for this  are:

PROBLEMS

1.) Corruption due to some worm entered in your computer when you switch on the internet from cable(Most probable reason).

2.) Some corruption due to missing registry entries etc.. cause real time instability.

3.) In your router, may be unnecessary UDP ports are opened, close them immediately from your router(Read router's manual or check website about your router model and instructions). Worms mostly (99%) travel through UDP ports.

FIXING PROCEDURE

Step 1

Switch off your internet for a while.

Step 2

Download Avira Anti-Virus Free Edition (the best antivirus! of highest signature detection rate! 99.6%) from http://www.download.com/Avira-AntiVir-Pe... from some another computer  (2nd computer is necessary). After downloading the file from some another computer you have to be a little bit more cautious. Save it to some portable media like USB Drive or External HDD something like that and make the file as Read-Only so that it cannot be infected. I would suggest you to write the file into CD-ROM and then install the antivirus from CD as some viruses can change file attributes.

After installing Avira, create rescue CD, and then perform a thorough virus scan without entering into windows.(rescue disk is necessary for this).

Uptil now your computer is free of viruses but still to check windows of invalid system files and registry keys steps 2-3 are required.

Step 3

Now, to repair the OS registry keys to default values and necessary operating system files repair your windows from your windows CD-ROM by inserting it at boot-time (DO NOT CLEAN INSTALL AS YOU MIGHT LOOSE DATA!).

Step 4 (Dont perform this step unless and until you very sure about the speed of your PC)

By this step most of the problems of the systems should be gone. Finally, if you think that your computer is performing at a slower speed, however it should not, then install CCleaner and run a registry scan to delete invalid entries in the registry. You can download it from here http://www.download.com/CCleaner/3000-21... (freeware and one of the best!). Download from another computer (idea is to stay offline). Dont try to remove junk files using 'Remove Junk Files Button' from the software(important as you might encounter BOD) instead run Disk Cleanup from "%SystemRoot%\system32\cleanmgr.exe" and then perform cleanup.

Step 5

If you are having windows XP SP1 then please! upgrade it to SP2 or SP3, this will ensure that no worms enter your computer as TCP/IP concurrent half open connection limit in SP2 is only 10 connections/sec. This is very important as worms travel from network to network and can spread very fast if the limit is exceed by 100 and UDP ports are opened, even you didn't open your internet browser!. If you dont want to upgrade to SP2 or SP3 then you can use software like evid patcher, it will patch your tcpip.sys driver file to set the limit to 10. You can direct-download it from http://www.lvllord.de/download.php?url=e... You can turn off avira for patching if it is blocking the patcher software.

Step 6

Open up your internet connection having avira security features on your computer turned on.

You are ready to browse and work without any crashes.

Answer 2

I suggest

Follow the instruction on the link below to clean your computer first

10 easy step virus and spyware removal using free software

http://www.review-ninja.com/2008/08/10-e...

Then  Follow the link below for List of Free windows security tools that you can download and use

http://www.review-ninja.com/2008/08/web-...

Pick one of each, download and install it

Firewall

Anti-Spyware

Anti Virus