G
Guest
The above is the progression of events that happened when using XP
Professional SP1. I only used the PC again that week (we share it), and was
installing a game (which apparent requires an internet connection to validate
itself) when in the middle of installation, I noticed that the McAfee
Security Center and firewall (ISS) icons disappeared in my system tray. I
checked processes, and APPARENTLY they were running.
After installing the game, i tried opening my firewall from program files,
and it showed me the last recorded activity was before installing, which is
weird because my PC usually gets hammered (ISP sucks). So I tried running
McAfee's Security Center to see when it was last updated. Note I didn't
close my firewall dialog box, and it suddenly disappeared. So did Security
Center in a second or so. Any time I tried running them, they would
disappear.
They worked in Safe Mode, though, so I ran a full scan, caught ONE virus and
deleted it, then ran AdAware SE. Tried running in Normal, and the error was
still there, and Internet was running slow. Ran housecall in Safe Mode with
Networking, caught other viruses, removed them. I thought it was fine, but
when I got to work the next day other people who share the home PC reported
that it was still not working. So I checked the office's XP PC and requested
them to delete the winsys.exe registry entry and rename the file found in the
system32 folder, which was not caught by anything I ran.
Now they reported the taskbar disappeared (it's looks like it's still down
there, but they can't drag it up), Security Center and Firewall windows still
disappear when run manually. They ran Stinger, but couldn't find anything.
And NOW drag and drop doesn't work.
What's going on? Is it a virus? Can I recover the OS? Can I perform an
in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of XP? I've had this PC "fixed" 4 times
already in the past 3 months (hardware failure, reinstallation of OS because
I couldn't recover from viruses/spyware/trojans/worms, whatever), I don't
want to go through that again.
Professional SP1. I only used the PC again that week (we share it), and was
installing a game (which apparent requires an internet connection to validate
itself) when in the middle of installation, I noticed that the McAfee
Security Center and firewall (ISS) icons disappeared in my system tray. I
checked processes, and APPARENTLY they were running.
After installing the game, i tried opening my firewall from program files,
and it showed me the last recorded activity was before installing, which is
weird because my PC usually gets hammered (ISP sucks). So I tried running
McAfee's Security Center to see when it was last updated. Note I didn't
close my firewall dialog box, and it suddenly disappeared. So did Security
Center in a second or so. Any time I tried running them, they would
disappear.
They worked in Safe Mode, though, so I ran a full scan, caught ONE virus and
deleted it, then ran AdAware SE. Tried running in Normal, and the error was
still there, and Internet was running slow. Ran housecall in Safe Mode with
Networking, caught other viruses, removed them. I thought it was fine, but
when I got to work the next day other people who share the home PC reported
that it was still not working. So I checked the office's XP PC and requested
them to delete the winsys.exe registry entry and rename the file found in the
system32 folder, which was not caught by anything I ran.
Now they reported the taskbar disappeared (it's looks like it's still down
there, but they can't drag it up), Security Center and Firewall windows still
disappear when run manually. They ran Stinger, but couldn't find anything.
And NOW drag and drop doesn't work.
What's going on? Is it a virus? Can I recover the OS? Can I perform an
in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of XP? I've had this PC "fixed" 4 times
already in the past 3 months (hardware failure, reinstallation of OS because
I couldn't recover from viruses/spyware/trojans/worms, whatever), I don't
want to go through that again.