Winamp won't open and problems

[Tim923]

After years of working flawlessly I'm having the following problems with
Winamp:

Won't open first time. I have to try again.
Have to wait a minute or more for it to open.

It used to take less than a second to open. No viruses or trojans on the
computer.

I've searched the net and have read possible solutions, but nothing working.
I have uninstalled and re-installed Winamp several times, but nothing. I
don't have Sony Back Burner to the best of my knowlege.

[Tim923]

OK, I noticed that malwarebytes has removed fakealert trojan. But I still
can't get winamp to work well. Any suggestions. I don't know how fakealert
got on there.

[John]

Did you recently change your WinXP or VISTA themes, or load a new
plugin?

After uninstalling Winamp, did you try completely deleting the Winamp
directory & all subdirectories? NOTE: this will delete all your
Winamp plugins -- so instead of deleting, you might want to just
rename the directory and then install into another directory.

Hope this helps,
John
http://www.mp3-boss.com

[Tim923]

The only thing I can think of is the trojan false.alert. I'm thinking about
changing my mp3 player because of this. I don't know if windows media
player has a player like winamp lite.

[John]

I've seen some information that says that false.alert can cause IE
browser problems -- maybe the long delay is because Winamp is trying
to make a network connection?

I found a long thread from someone that had a number of problems,
including fakealert -- this might be helpful (but I haven't tried out
the suggestions):
http://forums.whatthetech.com/many_infections_incl_Trojan_FakeAlert_Malware_Trace_Spyw_t109313.html

John
http://www.mp3-boss.com

[John]

Another possibility -- the trojan might have corrupted your media
library:

I found the following information:

"I deleted the "recent.dat" file under C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins
\ml folder and that didn't make the issue go away but I thought that
maybe there were some profile specific settings that were causing
conflicts of somekind so I deleted the entire C:\documents and settings
\%username%\application data\Winamp folder and when I opened winamp up
again it prompted me to setup my winamp profile again, which I did and
everything works solid now. So thanks for the suggestion luispotro."

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=2257d0c49da3bdcc966977767384af42&threadid=197680&highlight=trojan

It mentions using the "clear media library" button as a possibility
(if you can load winamp), but deleting the recent.dat file appears to
be more successful.

Good luck,
John
http://www.mp3-boss.com

[Tim923]

Post by John
Another possibility -- the trojan might have corrupted your media
"I deleted the "recent.dat" file under C:\Program Files\Winamp\Plugins
\ml folder and that didn't make the issue go away but I thought that
maybe there were some profile specific settings that were causing
conflicts of somekind so I deleted the entire C:\documents and settings
\%username%\application data\Winamp folder and when I opened winamp up
again it prompted me to setup my winamp profile again, which I did and
everything works solid now. So thanks for the suggestion luispotro."
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?s=2257d0c49da3bdcc966977767384af42&threadid=197680&highlight=trojan
It mentions using the "clear media library" button as a possibility
(if you can load winamp), but deleting the recent.dat file appears to
be more successful.

Hmm. I'm using Windows XP. There is no file called "recent.dat" after I
did a search. I can't find those other folders either. I don't see any
button either. Thanks anyways.