Java SW STILL missing, HP printer won't scan, malicious scripts somehow involved!

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here (or would the current generation say I sound like a corrupted MP3 file?)

There are deeper, underlying problems at work, I'm afraid, that are preventing my brand new HP Officejet 7110 All-In-One printer-scanner-copier-fax from totally installing on my XP pc.

I KNOW you guys are suggesting a clean re-install, and I WILL keep that in mind as a last resort, but since I recently received my pc back from my computer-man with several added enhancements and new hard drive which is the same thing as a clean re-install, basically, I believe it's something else.

When I posted that I solved my own problem and got it to work - it WAS scanning, and everything worked! But NOW, I get a message on the window of the HP scanner saying the software isn't installed! I hesitate to discuss security issues here, and reveal too much about my computer set-up and security measures, but even my computer-guy suspects that I may have either HAD or still HAVE a hacker, since I have SEVERAL instances that almost positively indicate that an outside force has been manipulating my pc, and I'm STILL having trouble, even though I've taken even further security measures to protect myself.

If anyone out there happens to be patient and thoughtful, and would like to carry out an extended troubleshooting conversation which will probably stretch out to several week's worth of investigation, I'd greatly appreciate your valuable time spent helping me. I cannot even BEGIN to work on this problem until Tuesday, as I have a very important project that must be completed this weekend whether or not I'm limping along with strange error messages and warnings popping up.

If anyone wishes to ponder this situation over the weekend and suggest alternate approaches to what we've already gone over back around Labor Day weekend, I'll attack this whole dilemma anew on Tuesday. (IF I don't finish the project this weekend, I'll probably be in jail anyway, or whatever they do to people that were named Executor's and never managed to close their Grandmother's Estate after TWO year's of extensions! That's a WHOLE different set of help forums for THAT problem!)

By Tuesday, if I'm not dead or jailed, or haunted by my dead Grandmother to the point of insanity, I'll refresh my addled brain with the details of this perplexing problem and then bug the heck out of all of you again and again until I get it fixed!

I'll check back later to see if anyone's read my convoluted post. I just cannot write a succinct post if my life depended upon it!

At least those of you who have waded through my previous posts know, that if you don't like to READ, then just skip anything from NeedsALotOfHelp!

Start pondering now...

Were these "enhancements" done before the printer was installed, or after? And when you say you got a new hdd, is that in addition to your previous? Were your old files transferred to the new hdd? If the old hdd was ghosted onto the new one, then you have essentially the same thing as before, and it is not the same as a clean install.

You are curiously resistant to reformatting and starting fresh. Why? With the amount of time you spend fighting all these problems, I assure you it would be much easier to simply back up what you need, and reformat. This will get you to a known state, where everything should be working. You can then add things back one at a time and determine what causes problems.

As for a hacker, it is possible. You don't say what made you think that, but assuming your computer tech is competent and correct, you should set up a firewall, and change all your system passwords. This is another area where reformatting will help, because it will remove any back doors or trojans that have been installed on your box. Zone Alarm is a pretty good, easy to use free firewall. BlackICE defender is a good not free software firewall. Putting a router with a firewall in it between your computer and the net would be a more hardware solution.

Basically, I don't think that anyone here has the time to spend the many hours to figure out what your setup is, and what is wrong with it. If you start from scratch, we will be able to help much more easily. Reformatting and reinstalling is a matter of an hour's work or so, and I'm sure it will save you many headaches and much troubleshooting time in the future.

Due to the HUGE amount of data on my pc due to my husband's business, I'm terrified of starting something that I can't finish within a day or less since I need my computer on a moment-to-moment basis. Right now is a particularly busy time for him (home construction and remodeling), and I am the only other "employee" that isn't really an employee legally, and I'm his business' own worst enemy, in getting his contracts, bids, invoices, taxes, etc. done.

I guess I can give you more information in this post, I'm just so afraid of compromising our business info with the possibility of actually having someone hack into my pc that I'm acting overly paranoid. Sorry. I'm not really asking one individual person to spend hours helping me either, but I'm hoping that the "collective" (I'm thinking of the Borg from Star Trek here... hee-hee) might be able to provide help in bits and pieces.

So to answer YOUR questions:
-- I had a DVD-RW installed, additional RAM, AND a huge hard drive installed, and he left my original HD as well. Those were the "enhancements" I can remember at present, and they were done BEFORE I've been trying to install this new printer. Part of the problem is that he didn't install every last bit of software I originally had, and I've been installing the missing SW by bits and pieces as I discover it isn't there and I need it for something. He put in the basics that I needed to operate, but then I discover that I can't operate in my "standard operating procedure" because of all of the peripheral software upon which I rely.

-- As far as the old files "hosted" onto the new HD, I'm dumb enough I'm not sure what you mean (sorry), but the DATA files were copied onto one of his huge hard drives first, scanned thoroughly with HIS Norton utilities as well, and THEN placed onto my new HD. All of the programs were installed onto my new HD from scratch. Is THAT what you asked? ???

-- RE: backing up everything and re-formatting, I have Norton Ghost as part of Utilities, and tried unsuccessfully to back up my HD with that PRIOR to my pc's trip to my computer guy, and I kept getting some type of crash so I had to MANUALLY transfer stuff one section of files at a time onto CD's. Now, however, I should re-try Ghost with my DVD's instead, but I think the problem is that Ghost doesn't recognize DVDs as a backup medium - if I recall correctly. THAT was another of the problems. I have WAY too much data to use my ton of never-to-be-used floppies that I've recently purchased just for that purpose, as I'd go through more than a hundred, I'm guessing using floppies. Even using CDs, I'd use an extraordinary number to back it up. Can you perhaps recommend a BETTER backup program that I could purchase? I'd buy it in a heartbeat if it would help!

-- RE: hacking. My two computers are currently using a DSL conection via a shared router, but we've had a few conflicts with people instructing us to either CHECK or NOT CHECK the box found in my LAN or High-Speed Internet Properties where it asks in the Advanced section, "Protect my computer and network by limiting or preventing access to this computer from the Internet." For SOME reason, I was told NOT to check it as it would cause many problems, so until just recently, I didn't have THAT firewall working (partly because I was told that the firewall built into my router is all I needed). Secondly, on my laptop (which is used by our teenage daughter much of the time), for SOME reason the checkbox allowing others to have "remote access" to her pc WAS checked, although I know I didn't do it, and she swears that she didn't either! And finally, I've had files AND programs just disappear totally from my pc, and settings mysteriously change, and I'm not sure if I wrote about this in one of my first posts, but ALL of MY files - including my husband's business files suddenly appeared to have been deleted! I spent the afternoon verifying through "Properties" that although they didn't show up, that the megabytes were still present, and THEN I thought about "Customize these files" and the "Hidden" Attributes checkbox, and discovered that somehow ALL of my files were marked as "hidden" whereas all files NOT pertaining just to me were left alone. THAT was the FIRST very strange occurrence which was BEFORE my recent hardware updates. Only my daughter might have had the knowledge to do that (but she didn't until I discovered the problem and talked to her), and SHE wasn't even home to be able to do it since I'd last accessed my pc! There are numerous other examples including my pc and the laptop that I can provide if you need MORE, but after discussing these incidents in even GREATER detail with my "computer-man" for lack of a better term, my DSL internet provider tech support, as well as yet ANOTHER internet provider's tech support I'm still subscribing to for sentimental reasons, ALL concur that it sounds like external forces MAY be responsible for some of the incidences.

I HAVE changed ALL of my passwords for EVERYTHING, making them more complex (in fact, I think you'll find a post from me asking if anyone could recommend a good password manager program), since my alleged attacks on my pc's.

I actually PAID for BlackIce AND have also PAID for Zone Alarm,and had them installed at different times about a year ago, but I'm embarrassed to admit that it was difficult for me to use or understand (duh!) both, and I wound up signing a certificate of destroyal or whatever it is, and got my money back. I now rely solely on my Norton Utilities, and my XP's internal firewall protection as well as my router. During the time of my attacks, I downloaded the free trial version of Norton Personal Firewall, but then some of the quirkiness with these incidents caused my above-mentioned-"advisors" to tell me to un-install it because it was causing more problems than helping. (Do I get TOO MUCH advice, do you think? Who do I listen to when it conflicts?????)

So, getting to the bottom of your reply, again discussing reformatting and re-installing everything, if you have a suggestion as to a PROGRAM to use, or do I already have it at my disposal and just don't know how... or lead me to a helpful link somewhere that will help, I'd be willing to try it - but it is at great risk of mucking things up once again, where my ever-patient computer-guy makes a house-call to try to fix things, or I have to pack my stuff up and drive to his business. Remember, I do a LOT of studying with the built-in help files for all of my software, with tutorials, my TONS of computer books and manuals, and information that I find on-line. The problem is that I evidentially wind up being the only person on earth with the one question that I can't find answered anywhere above! (and THAT question will happen at around 4:30am right in the middle of my brave attempt to do something like a clean re-install by myself!)

My detailed answers must be tiring to wade through, but YOU ASKED FOR IT! hee-hee I'm just sincerely trying to manage things in the computer world, manage helping my husband's business stuff, not to mention income taxes and all of the other things that I have great difficulty taking care of on a daily basis. (I won't even GO there, as to why I may be LESS able to do things than others reading these posts, unless in a private message one-on-one) So... thank you for your patience with me, I'm not wasting people's time asking trivial questions, or asking about problems with some GAME (that I will most likely be 100 years old before I'm ever done with these responsibilities and am allowed to play!!!! ) I don't take time for fun, and spend all of my waking hours just trying to get done what I HAVE to get done that day, and my computer questions are VERY important to my family's financial welfare, as well as my relationship with my husband who gets pretty sick, (understandably) of my continual problems on my computers! I feel that I'm extremely dedicated to my responsibilities, and as you can see by the time of day of my posts, I actually forgo SLEEP just to try to get everything done in one day -which isn't possible for me to do.

I've given this lengthy, possibly whiny, addendum to my post to explain to all of you WHO this extremely verbose person is, and WHY is she driving all of us mad with her incessant complicated questions!?! Please, please, have mercy on me, for I know not what I do...

NeedsALotOfHelp

If this is a critical system, I would say you should get a professional to make a ghost image of your drive, then reformat everything and reinstall your software piece by piece, to get everything running again. (or you could do this yourself, but you seem rather hesitant to do this sort of thing.) This could be done over a weekend or in a day or two (assuming the techie isn't overworked), and return your computer to usefulness. If you found need for other software, you could then re-install it as needed, and being sure to make complete backups of your data regularly.

If the computer is so vital to the company, once it is fixed, get another one for your personal use, and dedicate the other to keeping the books and other business use. This will keep problems with software you use personally from spilling over.
I'm not a fan of Norton Utilities (and neither are many others here, I can't find the thread, but it has been discussed). The anti-virus is pretty good, but a lot of norton will cause problems all on its own.

As for hacking, I think you're rather paranoid. Install a firewall, as I've mentioned earlier, which will block all access to your computer unless you tell it otherwise. Keep up with your security patches as well, and you should be fine. Nearly all of the worms and exploits that are published in the news take advantage of vulnerabilites that have already been patched, but so many people just ignore the security warnings until its too late. Keeping current on patches and using a good and properly set up firewall will keep at least 99% of the crackers and script kiddies out there from doing anything to you, and the <1% remaining who are truly elite don't go around hacking random peoples' computers.

Partition Magic works well for reformating, but a new install of 2000 will let you reformat also. Another use for Partition magic would be to set up some partitions on your drive to keep your os, programs, and data in separate partitions. This way, you can reformat the programs partition if you have trouble, without having to reinstall the os or losing your data. This of course is in addition to regular backups.

As I see it, if your local computer techie is reasonably competent and can't fix your problems and give you a stable system, there isn't much chance of our being able to give a remote diagnosis, since you sound like you've installed a lot of software and made lots of changes which we wouldn't know about. I am going to continue saying that you have to bite the bullet, backup, reformat, partition things like I suggested, reinstall, then leave it alone other than to update security patches and install needed software. Get another computer for your personal use, which won't be so critical.