I have an intermittent problem on my computer: every now and then Windows seems to think it’s been altered and is no longer a legitimate copy. I get the popup with the red stopsign with the X in it saying “Windows has determined it’s been altered. Find out more about Windows, blah, blah, blah.” Your choices are “learn more” and “close.” Hitting “Learn More” takes you to a web page that talks about Gen-U-Ine windows. Hitting “Close” exits you out of Windows.
This will happen (rarely - maybe once or twice a month) when I’m just sitting at my computer - there’s no apparent pattern to what I’m doing - I might be browsing, I might be just sitting there. It also happens when I reboot my computer (maybe one out of every 5 reboots) and more frequently when my computer restarts after a power outage (about half the time). I’m usually able to make it to go away by rebooting into safe mode, then booting into regular mode. Sometimes I have to do this a couple of times before Windows regains its sanity.
However, I’m worried that someday I won’t be able to make it go away and I’ll be screwed. I know this is an authentic copy of Vista, as I built this machine with hard and software purchased from Newegg, and installed it myself. Of course I have the install disc sitting on my shelf.
When I read about this problem, the explanation and solution for the problem always seems to be on the order of “something you installed corrupted a windows file, go to a restore point, go to a backup, etc.” - but I haven’t installed anything outside of a game or two in the past months (maybe some games through Steam, Witcher2, not much else). Plus, I can go for a really long time with no problems.
I’m running virus checkers, Windows Defender, have a firewall going, etc, so I don’t believe that is a factor.
So the question I have is this: is there some sort of preventive action I can take to make this problem go away? I suppose I could backup my files and reinstall Vista, but I don’t really want to do that. Would setting a restore point at a known “good” state be enough?
I guess another question would be: could this be symptomatic of some larger problem that might rear its ugly head (some sort of hardware issue?).
Thanks for any insight.