Session Manager Subsystem *WinXP service* problems

[ethix]

Recently, starting a week ago I encountered a problem where my computer whould either hang an application or shutdown unexpectedly. With all the time that I've spent trying to figure out how to resolve this issue I'm still left a little curious what whould happen if I disabled this from running under in windows? I know for one thing that the "Session Manager Subsystem" is only in Win2k? First I thought my computer had a DoS (Denial of Service) attack, name of exploit: (Microsoft Windows XP .manifest DoS Vulnerability). So then I reformated. Nothing seemed to be resolved. So then I did a low level format with Western Digitals low format utility. Still nothing....

So I took a little more time to look into what processes normally run in windows and found out smss.exe fits the description perfectly.

This is the session manager subsystem, which is responsible for starting the user session. This process is initiated by the system thread and is responsible for various activities, including launching the Winlogon and Win32 (Csrss.exe) processes and setting system variables. After it has launched these processes, it waits for either Winlogon or Csrss to end. If this happens "normally," the system shuts down; if it happens unexpectedly, Smss.exe causes the system to stop responding (hang).

I've also read that it's common for some malware or backdoors to write to, or replace this file. So I ran a scan with both Norton and Kaspersky. Niether one of them gave me my hopes of removal. I've discussed this with my brother but to his mind he thinks its a my Western Digital(s) 80 gig (WD80JD). I'm currently running two as my master and slave and they run smooth as a horse... Therefor I've brought forth my issue here since now I know it entirly has nothing to do with hardware!

Have any of you had this problem or know how to resolve this? I'm going nuts here.


Thanks in Advanced,
ETHiX