Help Needed Pease

[Fern]

Computer keeps trying to connect (dial up) to internet by itself? My father's HP 310n computer will, on it's own, try about every 5 min to attempt to hook up to the internet. The "dial up connection" windows keep popping up. It will lay one over the top of the previous window.

He says it does not do this always/nonstop. That it appears an internal clock is driving the attempts.

Note that I said "attempt". He re-formatted the hard drive and installed win98(1st) this weekend. Before that, he had XP o/s (couldn't reistall XP as the computer system did not come with O/S disc-but that's another story!) and it was connecting to net. Fearing it was a virus, the above steps were done to remove it.

Since the reinstall it can't connect, but the repeated attempts are very annoying. Oh, and he switched ISP to netzero who apparently have their applet to connect -that is not affected. BTW, Mcafee is now and always has been up-to-date and finds nothing.

Any help with identifying problem and solution is appreciated big time. Thanks

 

[bacillus]

try running ad-aware for spyware!

 

[Fern]

Thanks, good suggestion. Unfortunately we tried that but the situation still persists. Please keep the suggestions coming. Thanks everyone

 

[bacillus]

have a look for anything suspicous in msconfig & your startup folder.

 

[Fern]

Thanks, will do. (I thought reformat/install w/h fixed a prob there, but will do) Is there such a thing as a mobo virus? - we did not flash bios.

Also looks like other peeps are having this prob. There's a similar prob posted at THG forum under Software>WinXP

Thanks a bunch for the suggestions