😕
Here we go...I've been having issues for a while now. I'll tell you the long story for the sake of being verbose and not leaving anything out. WinXP Pro running on MSI K8N Neo, BFG geF6800, gig of Mushkin DDR400, Athlon64 3000, a barracuda 7200 SATA drive (for windows/games) and a parallel drive for basic storage (160gb). All drivers up to date. system behind NAT box (router, if you choose), Windows firewall disabled when behind NAT box, and Norton always running.
Smart kid here, forgot to bring his NAT box with him on a travel trip...plugged system into hotel and forgot to enable firewall. I know...I KNOW...stupid. I hate myself for that. So I start seeing a slow down in system processes (at the hotel). I hit CtrlAltDel and notice that the CPU is pegged in the performance window but that there is nothing using those cycles in the processes window. Now I"m realizing what I did and I start shutting stuff down. I shut down the RPC process and the system gives me a critical error and starts shutting down. Great.
At this point, the pc won't boot properly. At first, it would get to the win logon but then would freeze from there on out. After several hard reboots, it wouldn't even boot that far. THEN it started coredumping on reboots saying that it couldn't access the system32/blah blah blah/SECURITY folder. Now I'm screwed. Now, let me tell you about the HDD composition...
When I built this system I installed two HDDs and put two partitions on each. SATA had one for Windows and one for games. Reg HDD has one that is formatted for storage and another that is partitioned but has not been formatted with a file system.
So, all data is intact at this point on all drives except for the folders that were damaged on the SATA drive. I attempted to use the windows repair utility 3 times on the damaged OS. No luck. So I simply blew that partition away and reinstalled WiinXP on that same partition leaving all other partions in place. NOTE: I install all programs EXCEPT games on the partion with windows (so when I reinstalled, I lost everything except storage data and game apps). At this point, I"m back home on my home network....safe and sound one would hope.
All of the sudden, same symptoms. 80-100% CPU util but only system idle processes is using all of those cycles according to the PC. I'm thinking "crap." So I rebuild it again, but this time I wipe out the whole SATA drive, hoping that if i was infected with something that it wouldn't have installed on a storage drive with no apps running at all (am I just being naive?). I reinstall on fresh partitions with fresh OS on the SATA. No luck. within a day...same issue.
So now I'm really worried. I blow the SATA drive away completely, format the unusued partition on my storage drive, and install XP there with another patition for games (now i'm only installing WoW for test and to feed my addiction).
This does not solve the problem either. I'm totally at a loss. Once it goes into this CPU hogging state...it stays that way until I reboot. Once I reboot, the machine operates normally until it randomly decides to start freaking out.
Can a trojan survive all of that? I have scanned with Norton's latest updates. I have run spybot, adaware, MS Antispyware.....come up TOTALLY clean aside from a few tracking cookies. I have a brand new SATA drive. Next step is to pull out both HDDs and put the new one in and start from scratch.
PLEASE!!! For the love of GOD!! If you have any ideas, aside from verbal abuse b/c I already feel like an idiot, please let me know.
Sorry for so much info...did i forget anything?
Here we go...I've been having issues for a while now. I'll tell you the long story for the sake of being verbose and not leaving anything out. WinXP Pro running on MSI K8N Neo, BFG geF6800, gig of Mushkin DDR400, Athlon64 3000, a barracuda 7200 SATA drive (for windows/games) and a parallel drive for basic storage (160gb). All drivers up to date. system behind NAT box (router, if you choose), Windows firewall disabled when behind NAT box, and Norton always running.
Smart kid here, forgot to bring his NAT box with him on a travel trip...plugged system into hotel and forgot to enable firewall. I know...I KNOW...stupid. I hate myself for that. So I start seeing a slow down in system processes (at the hotel). I hit CtrlAltDel and notice that the CPU is pegged in the performance window but that there is nothing using those cycles in the processes window. Now I"m realizing what I did and I start shutting stuff down. I shut down the RPC process and the system gives me a critical error and starts shutting down. Great.
At this point, the pc won't boot properly. At first, it would get to the win logon but then would freeze from there on out. After several hard reboots, it wouldn't even boot that far. THEN it started coredumping on reboots saying that it couldn't access the system32/blah blah blah/SECURITY folder. Now I'm screwed. Now, let me tell you about the HDD composition...
When I built this system I installed two HDDs and put two partitions on each. SATA had one for Windows and one for games. Reg HDD has one that is formatted for storage and another that is partitioned but has not been formatted with a file system.
So, all data is intact at this point on all drives except for the folders that were damaged on the SATA drive. I attempted to use the windows repair utility 3 times on the damaged OS. No luck. So I simply blew that partition away and reinstalled WiinXP on that same partition leaving all other partions in place. NOTE: I install all programs EXCEPT games on the partion with windows (so when I reinstalled, I lost everything except storage data and game apps). At this point, I"m back home on my home network....safe and sound one would hope.
All of the sudden, same symptoms. 80-100% CPU util but only system idle processes is using all of those cycles according to the PC. I'm thinking "crap." So I rebuild it again, but this time I wipe out the whole SATA drive, hoping that if i was infected with something that it wouldn't have installed on a storage drive with no apps running at all (am I just being naive?). I reinstall on fresh partitions with fresh OS on the SATA. No luck. within a day...same issue.
So now I'm really worried. I blow the SATA drive away completely, format the unusued partition on my storage drive, and install XP there with another patition for games (now i'm only installing WoW for test and to feed my addiction).
This does not solve the problem either. I'm totally at a loss. Once it goes into this CPU hogging state...it stays that way until I reboot. Once I reboot, the machine operates normally until it randomly decides to start freaking out.
Can a trojan survive all of that? I have scanned with Norton's latest updates. I have run spybot, adaware, MS Antispyware.....come up TOTALLY clean aside from a few tracking cookies. I have a brand new SATA drive. Next step is to pull out both HDDs and put the new one in and start from scratch.
PLEASE!!! For the love of GOD!! If you have any ideas, aside from verbal abuse b/c I already feel like an idiot, please let me know.
Sorry for so much info...did i forget anything?
