Win 10 – Bad Image messages

Are you running McAfee antivirus?

I remember this from work a few years ago. McAfee got snippy about some apps that hadn’t been updated for a while.

It could well still be Avast.

Something is intervening and looking at these files as they execute and that’s exactly what antivirus does.

Have a look in Avast’s logs and the Windows System logs in Event Viewer.

Whatever it is will have left a trail.

You’ll find a ton of conflicting posts on the internet, most of which revolve around virus activity, which this isn’t.

IIRC whatever is causing the error message, and it isn’t justsched, believes the security certificate (or something similar, I forget the exact term) is way out of date and starts objecting.

So scannow could well fix the issue by updating the exe file that is being objected to. It won’t fix whatever is doing the objecting.

The problem we had is that it’s quite common in the Corporate world to be unable to update even seemingly mundane apps like Adobe Reader because another bit of (usually bespoke) software needs a certain version. Adobe update Reader and change the way things work. Company Z won’t upgrade the bespoke software until someone pays them to. Result is areas of the business on different versions of software.

That’s why I’m suggesting looking at the logs, which no-one ever does, to see if the reason is actually written down rather than guessing.

I know what you mean about logs, but if you have a look immediately after it’s happened (or know the exact time of the last one) it’s easier. Also you’re looking for anything involving a specific filename.

The thing to do is not get distracted by the red and yellow alerts which you think are show stoppers but are usually just time outs of no consequence. It’s what the scammers do to scare the sh1t out of their victims.

I’m recalling a bit more about it now. It started happening when the customer wanted the McAfee reporting paranoia level increased and these non problems (they weren’t really false positives because they did meet the criteria) started being flagged up by pop ups on the customers screen.

The pain of dealing with it was out weighed by the increased security, but I’m convinced that’s only because us out sourcers were dealing with the issue not the retained security staff (who never had to talk to an end user).

Hmm

Seeing as Skype won’t work either im still leaning towards an SSL (secure sockets layer) problem. Looks like when a program tries to open a secure channel it can’t because of a Windows problem. ntasn1.dll is part of Windows internal error handling system amongst other things.

Its a shame that SFC (system file scan) didn’t complete first time and it may be worth running it again but if it still fails please let me know what version of windows your running.

I am not sure that it is relevant in this case, but sometimes you have to run SFC several times and even do so in safe mode when fewer drivers have been loaded. It was a while back when I last did that, so I cannot now remember why it was needed. It can be that SFC does a partial job then hits a problem but that when it reruns it can access the reloaded/corrected version and bypass the obstruction.

I would try it in safe mode and see if you can make more progress.

[It has been a trying afternoon one PC has downloaded the software removal tool a dozen times and keeps wanting to repeat and another one refused to complete its back up. CHKDSK has now allowed some progress on that issue, that is progress not yet completion. Arghhhh]

Richard

Seeing as its W10 you may like to try an upgrade repair. Look at this linkHow to: perform a repair upgrade using the Windows 10 ISO file – Microsoft Community

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/wiki/insider_wintp-insider_install/how-to-perform-a-repair-upgrade-using-the-windows/35160fbe-9352-4e70-9887-f40096ec3085.

Thanks Graham a useful tip. My wife’s PC keeps behaving very badly (An Intel NUCwith Samsung M2 drive – a combination that frequently seems to have Windows 10 issues – her problems came after the carp Anniversary updates). I can see that an inplace repair may well be my next attempt to stabilize the darned thing.

You don’t need anything extra to do a reinstall, W10 will do it itself.

Settings – Update and Security – Recovery – Reset this PC. You have the choice to keep your files but all the apps will go.

This is a true re-installation, exactly as if you’d done it with an ISO on a USB stick or DVD.