No internet and no peripherals on my laptop.

[Cristatus]

I recently installed two programs on my coputer (Daemon Tools and Counter Strike).

After quitting CS, and then browsing the internet for about an hour (without problems, mind you) I put the laptop into Hibernate. After waking up during the day, and un-hibernating the computer, I have realized that the icons that show your network connection on the taskbar have disappeared (for both my wired and wireless adapters).

I figured that the icons may just be hidden, so I checked out Control Panel -> Network Connections and realise that none of my adapter are coming up. So I checked the Device Manager and there are no icons whatsoever, even my video card, and whatever else shows up on there is not showing up. Basically it's just blank.

So I thought I would check out whether it was working with Netstumbler, and I realise that the adapters are actually working, but there is no interface to get them to work. So then I thought, maybe I could be able to play a game, so I asked my mate to fire up CS, and we play a couple of LAN games, with no problems. After playing the games, we both quit, and I try Firefox again to see whether or not there is an actual connection. Turns out that the connection works (wireless, don't know about the wired connection).

After trying out the internet I check out the device manager, and there is still nothing there.

I've tried scanning for spyware, and there was no spyware detected, and I have scanned for virii as well, and there were none found.

Does anybody know what's going on here?

 

[Cristatus]

I don't think this thread is getting enough attention in this forum.

Is it possible to move this thread to the Operating Systems forum

 

[Fardringle]

One of my home PCs has exactly the same problem. Network Connections is empty, Device Manager is empty, CD/DVD drive cannot read data disks, network connectivity is very poor (if it works at all), and frequent pop-up ads even when there are no applications open at all.

After some research it looks like a root kit that my daughter picked up (it's her PC) from one of the web sites that she visits regularly. She's only 5 years old so there is a very limited range of sites she visits and I'm surprised any of them (Disney, PBS Kids, Fisher Price, etc.) would have something like this, but it's likely a side-effect of a hacked site somewhere. Anyway, I have some experience dealing with rootkits and other scum software and this particular one looks especially devious. Even with a variety of tools I have not been able to effectively locate and remove the hacks from the system and will likely end up completely reformatting and reinstalling Windows on the computer as soon as I have time to do so.

I realize this probably isn't the answer you wanted, but there are so many hacked API hooks and other kernel modifications in this rootkit that I feel it just isn't worth the time to try and repair all of them.

 

[Cristatus]

Oh man. In that case, that means that I will have to start backing up my 42.8 gigs of data.

On that note, what's the best way to back up all that data, without moving it off to another drive? It's a laptop, so I would have to use another computer, which I don't have access to, or I will have to use an external HDD, which I don't have either.

44032 MB (43 gigs)
------------------------ = 9.1 DVDs.
4812.8 (4.7 GB DVD)

DVDs are not a cheap solution either, but that would also mean that I have easy access to the data once it's backed up.

Any ideas?