In the past few weeks my PC has been exhibiting some bizarre symptoms, all of them related to cookies. I'll appreciate any insights you might offer. Here's a brief recap:
Everything started with Win98's frequent crashes and GPF errors. Perhaps everyday occurrence to some, but very uncharacteristic for my machine.
Scandisk revealed nothing. However running it under DOS yielded a completely different picture: FAT errors, crosslinked files, lost clusters... VERY unusual for my machine as I perform very regular maintenance on it and am not a newbie when it comes to these matters.
Anyhow, I fixed all the errors.
Less than 48 hours later, I get more crashes, more GPF errors... [img alt="" src="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/icon/icon_smile_shock.gif" border=0] OMG is my HD dying, I started wondering.
Once again, I fixed all the errors.
Now repeat this scenario 7-8 times. [A onclick="addImg('icon/icon_smile_shy.gif')" href="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/j-ava%20script:void(0)" rel=nofollow][img alt="" src="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/icon_smile_shy.gif" border=0][/A]
That's when I started seeing patterns: I noticed that it's ALWAYS the same cookie files that were yielding these I/O errors.
I did a thorough scan of the HD. No read/write errors. No bad sectors. Everything is fine. The HD is in good shape. [A onclick="addImg('icon/icon_smile.gif')" href="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/j-ava%20script:void(0)" rel=nofollow][img alt="" src="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/icon_smile.gif" border=0][/A]
Then I deleted ALL cookies, and recreated them by visiting those few sites I regularly accept cookies from. (Otherwise I block all other cookies.)
However the same thing kept repeating itself! [A onclick="addImg('icon/icon_smile_disapprove.gif')" href="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/j-ava%20script:void(0)" rel=nofollow][img alt="" src="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/icon_smile_disapprove.gif" border=0][/A]
SAME cookie files - namely those given by
stockgroup.com (and all its affiliates)
globeinvestor.com
these ALWAYS kept getting crosslinked with another file under SYSTEM\mui\0415.
Same cookie files, same directory, ALWAYS. [A onclick="addImg('icon/icon_smile_shy.gif')" href="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/j-ava%20script:void(0)" rel=nofollow][img alt="" src="vny!://www.discovervancouver.com/forum/icon_smile_shy.gif" border=0][/A]
The common characteristic of these sites is that both are very jvascript intensive. I'm beginning to think that either something is wrong with their JS implementation, or something with those cookies is not right that they've been causing these errors.
Has any of you ever seen/read/observed anything like this before? Because I haven't found any documented cases of cookies' causing system errors. However I have no other explanation for this situation.
I've also tested something else: My system works perfectly when I don't visit those sites. (Yet I MUST visit them for my work.)
What would you recommend? What're your thoughts?
