Repeatedly experienced severe crashes while playing Q2 online

[The Happy Friar]

If you think someone is hacking your machine then LAN'ing Q2 won't crash (if that's the reason for a crash).  Disconnect your router from the 'net & do some LAN.

[|iR|Focalor]

Hey, I think I recall you were saying you had a BIOS virus on your board some time ago, is that true?
How did you find out it was there and what did that fucker do?

That was my assumption for a while. That was one of MANY individual assumptions I had for a while. I never did find out for sure exactly what the problem was with my last PC. Around late November or early December of 2011, the whole "rebooting in the middle of shit" got so bad and so frequent that at that time, it wouldn't even stay running long enough for the desktop to come up before it would crash out and restart on me over and over. But probably 10 to 6 months before that, I went to my motherboards webpage and downloaded something to reflash the BIOS chip with the most up to date data available. After running it and restarting the system, nothing really changed performance-wise. I still couldn't stick any CD's in the drives without it rebooting after reading anything. So I guess that ruled out problems with the BIOS. But in my investigating that as a possible cause, I found several places around the web talking about how it was somewhat rare but entirely possible for viruses or rootkits to make changes to BIOS data. And that makes sense, because if you can download a program and run it from the hard disk to make updates to your BIOS, then why couldn't malware do it too? Before that, I was under the impression that the only way to physically change data on the BIOS chip would be to actually REMOVE the chip and put it into some type of special chip programming thing. Apparently... not so.

But anyway, after adventuring into that area, it became somewhat apparent that the problem was more than likely caused by one or more pieces of failing hardware, probably something on the motherboard, perhaps even a main CPU overheating or damaged. I can't say for sure. Luckily I don't even have to give a shit anymore. I have this new system I got last xmas, so the old one is sitting in the guest bedroom closet collecting dust. Haven't really had any problems with this new system. Only weird things I've experienced with this one has been the hard disk occasionally making clicking and chunking noises. At first I thought I just got a bad hard drive that was fixing to fail, but I waited and waited and it never failed. Eventually the noise just went away. It ended up coming back again a few times and leaving, but I ran a few scans with some antivirus progs and ended up finding what I guess was one of those 0access rootkits I mentioned. Since I didn't get a Win7 CD with this machine, I wasn't able to format it and be certain that I got rid of it, but according to the antivirus progs I've run, they've removed it and don't detect anything from it anymore and I also haven't heard that noise coming from the hard disk anymore. From what I've read, 0access rootkits can remain even if AV progs claim to have eradicated it. They also went on to say that you shouldn't trust AV progs to be correct when they say it's gone, and you should refrain from doing any banking on that infected machine or using any sensitive personal information with it such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc. Since I never use this machine for anything like that,... and since it seems to functioning properly and doing everything I need it to do,... I ain't gonna do anything like go out and buy a copy of Win7 just so I can format it and be 100% certain. I look at porn and download torrents on this damn thing all the time, and with the help of a couple of AV programs, I seem to have avoided any major issues so far. So until something happens and I HAVE to spend any money to fix this thing, I'm just gonna leave it alone. With my shitty luck, if I tried formatting it, I'd probably CAUSE more problems than I'd solve.

[Jman-CRU]

Sorry, was busy the last two days; I've checked the local HiFi and electronic stores for line conditioners and updated my operating system to the latest version (it took 8 hours, would you believe?). He, and since they've added some stupid mouse acceleration to it, it's now useless for playing Q2. Just my luck. D'oh.

@ Happy Friar: After all those crashes, there's only one working system left - I'm out of PCs for LAN'ing, else I'd already be testing again. For now, I guess I should single out the power/line trouble first and see if it solves the problem. If not, I got no other choice but to dig deeper.

@ Foc: At that very time I was beginning to suspect some virus was messing with my BIOS, too. Like you, I started browsing the web for answers. I found out about that BIOS-virus stuff, too, and that you could easily read and change any BIOS of any component on your board. I tried flashing the BIOS, setting more secure BIOS passwords, but everything would reset out of nowhere.
So soon after that, I replaced all the hardware and cleaned all HDDs including MBR, but the trouble with BIOS resets went on with the new board and the following system, too. It now looks like it was the power issue, but of course it would have been quite interesting to hear how to detect a BIOS virus.
 
Anyway, I found out the hard way that porn, torrents and downloading freeware are the best ways to ruin your machine. This is expecially true for systems running a Windows OS.
I'm sure you know it and I'm not going to preach - I'll just share a few experiences, just in case.
If you wanna watch porn (who doesn't), try using a browser like Bitbox (browser-in-the-box). Or even better, pull the plug of your hard disks and try using some Linux live CD (LPS, Sabayon or whatever). It's boot & go; all you need is enough RAM and a decent DVD drive. Just make sure to turn off the power of your PC for at least 10 seconds after shutting down, so the RAM gets cleared, and there will be no more Windows infection when browsing porn sites. And you only got to download a new live CD iso from time to time to get the latest flash player plugin, that's all.
 
From my experience, most torrent stuff is infected, sometimes with self-made stuff that no AV scanner will detect. Especially not when the infected OS is up and running! Instead of using that stuff I'd prefer a Linux OS over Windows and use one of the great many free programs out there that easily keep up with anything running on Windows boxes. A Linux OS is very good for running AV scans on Windows partitions, too!
Since you don't have a Win install CD, you could at least try installing a Linux OS on another hard disk and go on using the Windows for dirty shit if you MUST use torrents. That way, you'd have at least one clean OS. Sabayon and Ubuntu are the most easy to use operating systems, at the same time providing a huge number of available programs and they are WAY more secure than Windows.
 
Last not least: Using a backup tool like clonezilla helps with systems that come without a Win install CD. You got to pay attention when backing up or restoring, for you can mess things up easily, but if you read carefully, clonezilla helps a lot! One backup before you even connect to the net and one after you've updated and configured everything, and you're on the safe side. Just my 2 Cents.

[|iR|Focalor]

From my experience, most torrent stuff is infected,

I dunno about "most". I've downloaded tons of music in MP3's, probably in the ball park of 70 GB total size and 750 or more full albums. Haven't come across a one single virus in any of the MP3's. I've downloaded a crapload of videos too, mostly TV shows and movies (no porn movies though). I haven't come across any viruses in any of those either, but I'm pretty sure theres a few movies floating around out there that would probably be more likely to contain a virus in it somehow than a music MP3.

Video games and software, however... I've actually come across one or two viruses in those. On my last machine, I torrented some Cabela's hunting game that I think had a rootkit or virus wedged into the games installer, which was probably modified to include the virus. Like a fool, I didn't scan any of it before attempting to install it, nor did I take any time to read the comments posted by other people who had downloaded it. Another time, I actually DID scan the files (I think it was a GTA Vice City torrent), and found some extra EXE in the cracked content folder that was flagged as possibly containing a virus. It wasn't the games cracked EXE or the EXE for the keygen, it was some totally extra EXE that wasn't even necessary to use for cracking the game, yet the file was named something like "OpenMeFirst.exe". I merely didn't open it, and all was well. I also knew that the AV scan would probably find it before even running the scan, because I read several comments posted by previous downloaders when I downloaded the torrent file. It's always a good idea to not download some brand spanking new program. Give it a while to get used, let all the other numbskulls be the guinea pigs. When they all start posting a bunch of comments on ThePirateBay saying there's some nasty shit in it,... don't download it. Simple as that.

So as far as I can tell, torrents can be dangerous, but if you play it smart and cautious, you can probably avoid the bad ones. Of course... the only way to be 100% safe is not to download any of them. But if you HAVE to download torrents, just be smart. Don't download new and untested torrents, read the comments, keep your AV programs up to date, and scan EVERYTHING before attempting to open or install.

But the way I've gotten BY FAR more hits for viruses and malware than anything else has been by surfing links from porn site to porn site and getting met with drive-by downloads. And believe it or not, I'd probably say I've been hit with an equal amount of them by browsing around all the site links provided by Google and Yahoo searches when searching for random things, sometimes just image searches. I think this is how the majority of people acquire viruses and malware, by going onto a website they aren't familiar with. It's usually the numbskulls who browse aimlessly and click on links and ads they probably shouldn't. Believe it or not, there are plenty of porn sites out there that WON'T give you viruses. These sites are businesses and WANT visitors and income, and they won't get that by allowing their visitors to get infected with viruses that will prevent them from using their computers. BUT... there are also plenty of shitty porn sites out there that WILL infect you. Like I said, it's best to only go to sites you're familiar with. Sites with free uploaded porn clips like YouJizz, XXXBunker, and RedTube are pretty safe to view. It's when you start clicking the banner ads and off-site links that you're likely to run into something bad. You start clicking ads and hopping from site to site and before you know it, you've landed on some Romanian based porn site no one's ever heard of containing a java banner ad that's automatically installed some shit that will be next to impossible to get rid of.

[Jman-CRU]

@ Ely: Wow, been a while since I last got raped by you since I've seen you on the servers. Are you still playing from time to time?
Uhm, I never owned a PSU, so there's nothing to replace, but I'm working on getting at least a line conditioner and maybe later a PSU, too. Unfortunately, this month I got to spend money on several other things first.
And I'll check that program out as soon as I've set up another Win system - after the last crash I started using another OS. Gonna check the repositories, maybe there's a version for this OS, too. Not sure what to do with the results of that stress test, though.

@ Foc: When I started using emule, I was careful enough to avoid the newest versions of programs or vst plugins; I never went for the fancy shit and never got too greedy, but even most of the old stuff was infected. Most of the installers had a trojan or virus aboard, and the few things that seemed to be clean later turned out to be infected, too. Let alone all the stuff that wasn't even working.
Same when I started with Pirate Bay and BitTorrent (or whatever it was) after emule went down the hill. It was like you'd download one hidden .exe, one trojan, one keylogger and maybe one "clean" prog that'd turn out to be broken or shitty or a wrong version. So at some point I quit wasting my time downloading this junk and went for open source. And I'm happy.
All that torrent stuff is now sitting in an isolated folder, and from time to time I run a scan with the latest detection rules, just for the fun of it. Even now it keeps detecting new malware. Could be a lot of false positives, but I'm not going to try it out. I kinda had it with this shit.

Yeah, you're right about those surf-by infections. And yeah, maybe some providers of porn sites actually care about safety - although I'd doubt it, unless it's a pay site maybe. There's sites out there known to be dangerous, but they're swarming with people. Maybe some visitors get hacked and won't return, but others keep coming. Why care?
And I don't have to care, either. I've never been the one to follow any links or click on every button, but even if I did, it wouldn't matter. I'm still careful, but I don't really have to worry about all that anymore. If there's a surf-by infection, all I have to do is shutdown the computer, clear the RAM and it's gone. And if I got to have some song or clip, I don't download it anymore; instead I plug line out and microphone together, visit the site, play the clip while using "recordmydesktop", synchronize audio and video later on - and that's it. Linux has made my life a LOT easier.
If it wasn't for that stupid mouse acceleration of most Linux systems, I wouldn't even bother using Windows for Q2 anymore. You got to modify like 200 settings just to harden an ordinary Win7 install, and what for?
Oh well... Hehe.

I guess I should close this thread and do my homework now. Let's see if it solves the problem. Thanks a lot for your patience and your help, guys! Your knowledge is appreciated!

[|iR|Focalor]

Well most of those... uh... "free and downloadable" ... games are gonna have some type of pirate protection on them like requiring a key code. Most of those games are gonna come with cracked EXE's that work around it, and I'd guess what is coming up on the scans is those cracked EXE's. Sometimes, they really are infected. But a lot of times, it's just false-positive. That's been my experience anyway.

[PANTONE 7717C]

Uhm, I never owned a PSU, so there's nothing to replace

Huh? How can you not own a psu and have an operational computer? Or do you mean you always had a generic POS PSU that came with the pc-case?
Anyway, just wanted to add that it really shouldn't surprise anyone that scanners detect malware in cr4ck3d software that was torrented. The same thing happens with anticheat, the way those cr4ckz work resembles the way that malware or trojans operate, they are designed to cr4ck programs and exe's and change registry entries and whatnot to make it run on your computer without payed keys or serials. I always exclude that specific stuff and only scan the rest of the content of torrents, otherwise it's no use trying to run a cr4ck and get it working. That in itself is a risk that most of us (who don't have the funds to pay for every little piece of software) are willing to take I guess.

[Jman-CRU]

I meant to say UPS instead of PSU, lol. I got the two mixed up. D'oh. 
Of course I got a PSU, hehe. But I'm not going to replace that one. I'll get a new system with decent hardware instead. Later. Some time.

Uhm, the keygens that came with that "downloadable software" have already been detected as malware long ago. But now main exes or dlls show as trojan, virus or other malware, too. Hehe.

[|iR|Focalor]

Yeah, that's what I meant. Sometimes the games will come with keygen EXE's, sometimes just cracked EXE's for the game that already contain the key, sometimes both, just depends on the torrent. Typically what you'll find on piratebay is a legit complete copy of the game, along with a folder containing the keygen and/or cracked game exe, maybe the cracked Steam stuff if the game needs it, and a readme with instructions on how to install the cracked content. I don't recall you mentioning that you got any of your "borrowed" software from piratebay though. I would definitely recommend piratebay over a lot of the other torrent sites. I haven't seen any others that allow users to post comments on torrents, and those comments are HIGHLY valuable. They'll usually let you know if the game works, if there's any viruses in it, any problems there might be getting the game to run and possible solutions, etc etc.

But anyway, like Panjoo said, a lot of times antivirus programs are gonna call those game EXE's infected even though they aren't just because of the way they are made to bypass copyright protection measures. However... if when you installed the game, you didn't have to copy any kind of cracked EXE over the existing games EXE and all you had to use was a keygen and input that key during the install process, then I'd probably be worried about that EXE or DLL getting flagged as infected. Unless the torrented files came with those cracked files already packaged to where they'd automatically install to the proper location without you having to move them there AFTER installing the game, then there's a chance that they ARE infected. But like I said, usually with torrented games, you'll get the install of the game, and then a cracked content folder with instructions, and a lot of times that folder will contain files like a crack game EXE along with cracked game DLL's or cracked Steam files and DLL's, and THOSE will quite often come up as infected during AV scans even though they really aren't infected.

[ImperiusDamian]

What he said.

[Jman-CRU]

Yeah, I downloaded several torrents from PirateBay but gave it up soon. I would usually focus on getting a legit copy with a seperate keygen or a cracked exe/dll, or even better, just a legit copy and a list of legit product keys. And what I was trying to say earlier is that now some of the supposedly "clean copies" trigger an alarm, too.
Anyway, at some point I started scanning the Windows system partition from a Linux OS. And it would always find a nest of 10 to 20 snoozing trojans, viruses, backdoors, keyloggers, dialers the Windows AV never detected.
So I dumped "shared software" and went for freeware instead. And the more I started experimenting with Linux, the more I learned to appreciate open source apps. Plus, I started playing Q2 with Linux and didn't have any trouble for quite some time.

But for your amusement, the best is yet to come. When Foc and Dev started suspecting I was walling, I set up XP just to be able to use AC. That was when the trouble started again.
Very soon, a Quake player would snipe more or less subtle remarks on what I had done just the day before. I am talking about stuff that I had googled, movies I had watched, photos I had stored on my HDD and the like. The more he mentioned, the more I started to find it somewhat disturbing, for he seemed to know stuff he wasn't supposed to know. For several years this player used a nick just slightly different from the name of my first email account, and his ingame remarks made it look like that was no coincidence, either.
Plus, I found out that there was a lot of strange internet traffic going on whenever I was online. I tried my best to secure and harden XP, but this story's end is: No matter what I tried, I didn't succeed. So one day when he again quoted from a movie that was still in my DVD drive, I threw his shit back at him. He began to act evasive and soon left; after that he'd be remarkably friendly, no more strange remarks for some time. But r1q2 started crashing whenever some 160-ish or 140-ish ping player spec'd me.
So I started bothering Quadz with my assumptions, and after that, this 160-ish ping player would start a strange monologue ingame. Something like "I know another Quake player hacked me" and "if I lose this hacker battle, I will stop playing Quake for good". Pretty much a summary of what I had told Quadz in an email. 
Quadz tried his best to explain to me it wasn't possible to obtain my IP and hack me while playing Q2, and I didn't know what to do anymore. Finally I called my former lodger/host and asked him about that XP copy again. Now guess what... That's what you get when you're a noob and you trust your buddy.
THIS is why I abandoned XP - and why I believe that I got a "special friend" around. "Shared software"? Oh yeah, so much fun! 
No risk for me anymore, thanks!

[yahoo]

quite a spooky story you have there.  Hmm could be good enough for a short movie

[The Happy Friar]

If you're steeling stuff then you're getting what you deserve.  Take and share alike buddy!   

[|iR|Focalor]

If you're steeling stuff then you're getting what you deserve.

I deserve all the stuff I steal? Yes! I'm so glad you agree! I've earned all the free shit I collect just by being so damned wonderful!