Windows XP Rebooting Problem

[rowdog]

Greetings all,

I have recently begun having a boot-up problem with Windows XP.

My Specs:

I have a Dell Workstation 370
XP Pro SP3
2.8 P4 HT
2 gigs ram
Radeon HD 4670 512MB PCI-e 16x

Recently upon rebooting, it will start to boot as normal, but before it hits the XP splash screen it will sit with only a prompt showing on the screen, and it appears as it is attempting to read from the floppy drive. After about 30 seconds, it will continue to the XP Splash screen, will get past it, and then sit idle on a black screen. At this point I have to remove the power to shut it back down, and attempt to boot again, only this time it will go to the option screen to boot in safe mode, last known good configuration, or as normal. Selecting boot as normal here allows it to boot up just fine.

The only things that changed on my computer before this started happening was that, I installed and played Champions Online a bit. I also updated to the most recent ATI drivers for my video card (although it rebooted just fine after installing the new drivers). The game crashed to the desktop at one point, and everything on the system was running slow, so I attempted to reboot, and it seemed locked up, so I pulled the power......this is when the problem occurred first to my knowledge.

As far as Champions crashing, I am pretty sure it was not because of my computer itself, but merely the game, as the crashes have been pretty commonly known to players at this point. However the problems loading up are new to me. Once I do get it loaded it does seem to run just fine however.

Not sure what is causing it, so I am just going through the motions here. Any ideas/help would be greatly appreciated. Info you need any more info, just let me know, and thanks in advance.

Additional Info: I have since run a chkdsk with no errors found, run adaware with no issues found, and uninstalled Champions Online (just in case).

Thanks again for any help.

 

[Harvey]

I hope you're backed up. It smells like a virus. If you're infected, Adaware won't help for two reasons:

1. If it's a virus, and not spyware, you need an AV prog, not a spyware remover.

2. If it's a virus or spyware that wasn't blocked by your current definitions, the malware could defeat all of your protection programs. Sometimes, they will even appear to run and report no problems, even if the drive is infected.

If that's the case, you may have to wipe the drive and re-install Windows from the ground up. If you do it on another drive, after you install it and a fresh install of all your protection, you can try to transfer files from the old drive attached as a slave.

If you try that, make sure you back up your new installation before connecting the infected drive to your new setup.

Good luck.

 

[rowdog]

Hmmm, I was hoping that wouldn't be the case. I run avast as well for the resident protection, and have not had it trigger off recently. I am going to run Malwarebytes on a full scan now, and see if it comes up with anything. Oddly enough now that you said that, I just tried to boot up the virus scanner on avast, only to have it not open. It went through the normal memory test, but never popped up the scanner after doing so (it did pop up the normal tray bar for it though).

Any other suggestions for rooting out if this might be the case?

 

[rowdog]

C:\documents and settings\administrator\local settings\temp\Tlx9C6Ng.exe.part\nsis.hdr

NSIS:FakeAV-E [Trj]

Crap.....avast triggered on this as I ran the malwarebytes scan. Trying to send it to the chest now.