Boot critical file is corrupt

Reading the manual pdf seems to cause the crashes because it doesn't seem to crash when I don't have Adobe Reader open. Adobe Reader opens, and about a minute later, it crashes. Same thing last night, as a matter of fact; I was reading pdf documents when the crashes were happening. Is that an important clue? Should I reinstall Reader?

I read the part about F2 after I downloaded it an hour ago. I had to skim through A-15 because I knew the crash was coming, but it seemed to just advise on how to create a recovery dvd. On A-16, it says to hit Esc upon bootup. So I tried that, as well, and it's the same as hitting F2, except that it immediately shows just Boot Option #1 and Boot Option #2, along with Enter (Edit?) Setup. I have no idea what those Boot Options are; Boot Option #1 is [P1: MATSHITADVD-RA...]. It has the letters DVD in it, but this is not something on which I feel like guessing.

So I chose Enter Setup and it took me to the same screen that F2 takes me. By the way, when I'm in that screen, and go to BOOT, and the option that's selected by default has the word, "disabled" right next to it. So I don't think I would know what option to put it back to to make it boot to the desktop as normal after I run WDO. Thanks, again.

Run for awhile without Adobe Reader to see if it is causing problems which is rare. There are other readers.

The latest chapter in the saga:
I uninstalled Adobe Reader, and tested Adobe Acrobat to see if it also made my computer crash. It did, so I looked for it in Control Panel and saw Adobe AIR, but wasn't sure if that represents Acrobat, so I did nothing. Tried to restart, and it did but the taskbar at the bottom of the screen looked a little funky. I shut it down and it got hung up on the black screen trying to shut down. So I forced the shut down by holding the power button down.

I'm embarrassed to admit this part... I was on the phone with ASUS's tech support, which goes by the name Macro Fix. I asked the guy on the other end to tell me how to get it to boot from cd. Instead of telling me how to do that, I got me to do F8 and got remote access through join.me in Safe Mode. He saw over 57,000 events happening and he convinced me their techs had to be called on to save the computer. "You can remove the viruses, but bad things could linger,... got to fix the computer before the kernel becomes corrupt," something to that effect, and I got scared and signed up with them after holding off similar solicitations yesterday to remotely fix my computer for a fee.

I'm hoping to get a refund, though, as they did not remove the virus.. They did lots of simple stuff that I could have done and have done, and they tried a few times to execute WDO from Windows Safe Mode and Normal Mode despite my pleas to get the computer to boot from cd.

They reinstalled Acrobat, and given that the system seemed unstable when I uninstalled Reader earlier, I'm apprehensive to uninstall Acrobat now. So that's where I'm at. It crashed once as I was typing this and hasn't crashed for about 10 minutes... I have updated my Profile with the system info, so if I need to add more, please advise...

Thank you, Karlsnooks, I'm ready to see your instructions, if you would be so kind, on booting from cd to run WDO.

Yes, I read it in Nitro.

Are you suggesting that I uninstall everything Adobe because Acrobat might be hidden in one of those apps? I really need Photoshop. And Acrobat 8 was installed from the internet, so I don't think it would be in Creative Suite in the Control Panel > Programs to Uninstall screen, which is where Photoshop is. If I uninstall Flash Player, I wouldn't be able to see videos on the internet. I will try to open Photoshop and watch a video and see if that crashes the computer.

But Acrobat is not listed in the Programs list in the Control Panel, so if there is a way to uninstall it manually, that would be great. Would Absolute Uninstaller work? I'll also try to uninstall it in Safe Mode.

After that, I'll have some errands to run and I'll return later tonight. If you would like to do this tomorrow night, that would fine as there is something tomorrow I need to get ready for tonight. The computer seems to be running okay for now, provided I do nothing with Acrobat, pending my experiment with the other Adobe products.

That wasn't Asus Tech support you were speaking with, which is included absolutely free for the first year and doesn't do fee-based repairs under some other company's name. You were likely scammed. This is sad since you were in the middle of a help thread with the top tech forum on the web. Why couldn't you have waited or at least asked us before letting yourself be scammed.? We may be volunteers but we are many levels above phone tech support.

What I'd like to encourage you to consider now is to Clean Reinstall - Factory OEM Windows 7 since there is no telling what a mess has been made of things. What we can assure you is that you will get the very best install possible, and if you use the methods given to maintain it should avoid future problems.

If you're not ready for that yet then these Troubleshooting Steps for Windows 7 should help since problems you suspect with Adobe would likely be logged.

I'll start on that probably early next week.