computer behaving weirdly

[bigdan]

I dont know if this is necessarily an Intensive Care issue but I couldnt find where else to put it.

Yesterday my virus scanner Avast suggested removing some extensions. After I removed the last one Firefox seemed to reset and when I opened it again it seemed to be a fresh install, passwords, history, bookmarks were all gone. That was a blow.

Turned it off, this morning when I wake up the shortcuts on my task bar arent working. The browsers (including IE which I never use) arent opening, neither is my Win Explorer shortcut.

When I look for them int he start menu they do work. However when I goto Libraries nothing shows up in there. I have soo much stuff in my Documents and my Videos, but even those 2 folders arent showing up, not to mention the subdirectories!

And for some reason Chrome isnt working properly right now. Im using Firefox just fine (minus the bookmarks etc) but Chrome isnt loading anything.

Im in the middle of a virus scan but before I started it it said all is well so I'm pretty sure thats not going to give me any results. Please help!

 

[carnageX]

May be a good idea to try system restore to a point before you let Avast remove the addons. Or did you mean that you manually removed them?

Sent from my Nexus 7

 

[bigdan]

May be a good idea to try system restore to a point before you let Avast remove the addons. Or did you mean that you manually removed them?

Sent from my Nexus 7

that's not a bad idea. whats the disadvantage of a system restore, do i lose any data? i dont mind losing what i did over the last couple days as long as its nothing else.

i let avast remove the addons. but it didnt all happen automatically, it showed me the ones it objected to, i selected one, told avast to remove, then selected the other, told avast to remove, then one more time.

 

[carnageX]

System Restore only affects system files/installed programs. Personal files/documents/pics/etc. are all unaffected.

 

[bigdan]

I did a system restore. It said it failed but some things are better. Main one being the icons on the taskbar have come back (they had become just blank icons which didnt work) and the links within are working. I've forgotten if the wallpaper came back, will check when I'm home.

One of the things that didnt get fixed is that when I goto windows explorer and click on libraries, there's no subfolder. That's pretty odd I'd never seen that before this problem happened. I can still get to My Docs, Videos etc by manually navigating to it but I wonder what's happened there?

 

[carnageX]

I did a system restore. It said it failed but some things are better. Main one being the icons on the taskbar have come back (they had become just blank icons which didnt work) and the links within are working. I've forgotten if the wallpaper came back, will check when I'm home.

One of the things that didnt get fixed is that when I goto windows explorer and click on libraries, there's no subfolder. That's pretty odd I'd never seen that before this problem happened. I can still get to My Docs, Videos etc by manually navigating to it but I wonder what's happened there?

Should just re-add the libraries to that section.

 

[bigdan]

I figured out how to add the libraries back. So that's fixed. However my firefox doesnt have its bookmarks back. Is a restore supposed to fix that as well? To be fair I lost my bookmarks a day before all the other issues so its possible the restore date was bookmark loss. In which case I'd have to go back another day. But I dont want to do that if its not going to make a difference.

To expand on the Firefox issue virus scanner Avast was saying there's 3 faulty extensions (i think in total not necessarily FF). I removed the first 2 without incident but after I removed the third, it closed FF, and when it reopened it was a fresh install. Had the messages a fresh install would've as well. Bookmarks, history, forms were all empty.

 

[carnageX]

Well, what extensions were they?

 

[bigdan]

no idea man. that was some days ago. but would *removing* an extension create trouble? i can see how installing one might.

 

[bigdan]

i've looked in the profiles directory in Fx. there's 3 directories there. there's one that was created after 7/12 (when this whole mess happened), one in feb, and on in 2012, when i bought the computer. the 2012 one is empty. darn the luck.

if i was to restore the computer to a point before this mess would that fix the issue, or can data not be recovered? would the faulty extensions that i removed still be there then?