Weird behavior by Win XP

[Dimitri]

Recently I noticed some unusual things happening, its nothing major, but it's annoying and suspicious.

What happens is that seemingly at random and with nothing done on my part the way icons are arranged in folders will change (from by date to by type or something like this). Its a slight thing, but its annoying because I have folders where I save a lot of pictures and it is important for me for them to be arranged by date, and when windows suddenly decides to change it randomly of its own volition these large folders get scrambled and I can't find what I'm looking for and its a pain. Not to mention its unusual behavior, does this smell of a virus or something?

This happened like 3-4 times now, and now when I opened one folder the view style changed. There was this bar on the left that gave details. Again, I never told it to do this.

I scanned my computer with NOD32 and Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware, but neither found anything.

Does anyone know what might be going on?

 

[DMGrier]

Well if niether of those found any infections then I would say your machine is clean. The only thing that comes to mind is when you set it to organize by date do you do a proper shut down? If a machine does not properly shutdown then settings do not get saved.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

If a machine does not properly shutdown then settings do not get saved.

Yea that's true.And I really hate that lol.

Anyway...

Dimitri what was/were the last thing/things you did BEFORE this started happening?

Anyway you can go to FOLDER OPTIONS and on the VIEW tab click RESET ALL FOLDERS and then apply those changes.After that restart the computer,adjust the view of your folders exactly how you would like again and after that restart the computer again.

Hopefuly this will solve your issue.If not,let us know.




Cheers!

 

[Dimitri]

Yea that's true.And I really hate that lol.

Anyway...

Dimitri what was/were the last thing/things you did BEFORE this started happening?

Anyway you can go to FOLDER OPTIONS and on the VIEW tab click RESET ALL FOLDERS and then apply those changes.After that restart the computer,adjust the view of your folders exactly how you would like again and after that restart the computer again.

Hopefuly this will solve your issue.If not,let us know.




Cheers!

I'm gonna try what you suggested later.

The thing of changes not taking due to improper shutdown are definitely not the fault.

I don't recall that I did anything of significance before this started happening. I certainly didn't mess with the options of how to arrange icons.

It's now started doing another thing its not supposed to do: I have one folder I save pictures to and then folders WITHIN that folder, and now, if I save a picture into one of the subfolders it will move that folder in the grid (the grid of icons in the folder) to the very end (as it does when you save a new file). The logic is clear, its doing it because I've set it to arrange icons by date modified, and if I save a picture to a subfolder that subfolder then contains the latest icon so that's why it moves it to the end, but it NEVER used to do that (and I don't want it to do that) and, from what I can tell, I never fiddled with the settings, so there's no reason it should start behaving differently.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

You have some serious problems with the operating system if you ask me.Because it should not do ANYTHING you did not tell it to do.

This can be caused by various reasons unfortunately.

Anyway do what I told you before and if that does not help then try the following:

1. Perform CHKDSK...
2. Perform DEFRAGMENTATION...
3. Delete all INVALID REGISTRY...

Here is an explanation on how to perform all 3 things written above:

CHKDSK:

Open command prompt and write:

chkdsk.exe C: /F /R /X /V

Where "C:" is the drive letter you want to check for errors.If you have more than just one drive letter,BE SURE TO PERFORM THE SAME OPERATION ON ALL OF THEM!
And of course do NOT cancel process.Let it finish and do NOT do anything on the computer until it's finished.Once it is finished,restart the computer.

DEFRAGMENTATION:

Open command prompt and write:

defrag.exe C: /F /V

Where "C:" is the drive letter you want to defragment.If you have more than just one drive letter,BE SURE TO PERFORM THE SAME OPERATION ON ALL OF THEM!
And of course do NOT cancel process.Let it finish and do NOT do anything on the computer until it's finished.Once it is finished,restart the computer.

INVALID REGISTRY:

Download and install the program called Eusing free registry cleaner.
After that open OPTIONS in that program and make sure that ALL check boxes are checked.Click OK to save settings and then exit the program and reopen it again.Then start scanning the registry.Once the scan is complete,delete ALL INVALID REGISTRY ENTRIES WHICH HAVE BEEN FOUND.
After that restart the computer.


If all that still did not help then perform the REPAIR process of your entire operating system.You will need the CD/DVD-ROM disk of your operating system for that.




Cheers!