Hello,

My wife's computer had a cpu fan starting to go out so we went to fry's and purchased a new fan.

When I installed the fan I realized I did not unplug the power chord from the pc after I shut it down.

I rebooted and the system is working fine, but some pictures are not displayed.

For instance, If I go to the Yahoo homepage, the advertisements show up fine, but any pictures on the site show up as snow.

The wallpaper on the computer screen shows up fine, but any photo opened through Windows Explorer shows up as snow.

I tried reloading the video card drivers but nothing changed.

Any ideas?

I probably need to replace the motherboard but thought I would ask first.

Thanks

This does not sound like a hardware problem; it would be very unlikely that a damaged motherboard would cause images to display oddly while everything else works.

I can't think of anything that would cause it, though, other than an odd piece of spyware.

Definetly not hardware.

I'd put my money on a virus or spyware.

Ditto. Ditto.

What type of pictures show up as snow? Is it possible that your photos and the pics you were looking at on the net were in the same format, and that your desktop pic and the ads were different?

Perhaps the program that Windows uses to handle that format is borked somehow (due to malware or corruption perhaps). Try getting a bunch of pics in different formats, then open them and see what works.

Cheers

Mr B

That link discusses how it is possible to get a virus through a JPEG file. It says nothing to imply that the virus actually affects the viewing of JPEG files.

It also says that the virus discussed is not propagating; it has only been released to antivirus corporations.

Well I tried to open a .jpeg and the picture opens as snow.

I tried a .tiff and that picture opens fine.

Also, the buttons at the top of internet explorer are discolored, sort of glowing.

It is a Windows 98 machine so I don't think I can repair the installation without wiping out everything.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Sounds like a trojan has gotten hold of IE, probably altered some file associations and such. Try CW Shredder, Hijackthis.exe, Spybot etc. When the toolbars change like that, there is almost always a critter behind it (unless you installed something intentionally.) Hijackthis will usually help you ID the hijacker(s), then you can do some web searches for info of about what files are kicking it off. Can take some hours to find all the parts and delete them. Castlecops/Computercops forum can help you sift through the hijackthis.exe log for clues.

Well, my wife found a website that points to the processor as being the cause of the problem.

At the start all of this, the processor fan was sputtering, turning on and off.

I replaced the heatsink/fan with a larger heatsink/fan that was pretty tough to get on.

So I see three possible reasons:

- the fan was sputtering because the processor was going out

- I damamged the processor installing the new fan

- I shorted out the processor by not unplugging the power chord

This web site was about AMD K6 processors and how every type of image is displayed in windows except .jpeg

Apparently windows explorer & windows internet explorer are the main programs affected.

When I tried to open a .jpeg in windows image viewer, the file opened fine.

We ran spybot which found some things, but the problem persisted.

Anybody ever heard of this?

There is no way processor damage would cause the computer to corrupt only certain images. The processor has no idea what type of file it's processing, it's all just 1's and 0's. If it really was the processor, you'd be getting all sorts of grief with other programs, and the computer probably wouldn't even boot. If the computer is only having trouble with certain types of images in certain programs it's a software problem of some sort; either drivers, corrupt programs or malware.

Do you have a link to the website you mentioned?

Cheers

Mr B

Cocur with Mr. B.

Also, there is no way that a CPU fan can sputter because a processor is "going out". The CPU fan is simply a 12V DC motor attached to some blades. If it has 12V, it will run, regardless of what it is blowing air at. If you hook it up to a 12V battery, it will run just fine.

There may have been fan problems, but I doubt they have anything to do with JPEG corruption.

There was a small issue about 5 or 6 years ago with certain image files on specific AMD chips. Can't recall the details, it was a software issue IIRC, not really a chip problem. I can't imagine any of that carrying over to today.

Hijackthis is the best way to start looking for the little pests.

try a reformat?

I called AMD today and the tech support guy said to look at the processor and see if there is any damage.

He thought this could be a processor issue.

I will post what I see.