XP Home RPC Service Terminated Unexpectadely

[Aaron Casper]

I am assisting a colleague in troubleshooting his install
of XP Home. When he connects to his ISP (dialup to MSN),
the connection stays active for about 2 minutes to 2:30.
At that point, he recieves a critical error that reads:

XP Home RPC Service Terminated Unexpectadely

System Shutdown in 60 seconds.

The system then counts down it's 60 seconds and restarts.
I have reproduced the problem again and again on the same
system. It only happens when connected to his ISP, what
he is doing at the time doesn't seem to matter. The error
occured during startup of an online game, browsing with IE
5.5, and attempting to download SP1a. After stumbling
around the KB, and finding only meager mention of RPC, I
am at a loss.

Any help is greatly appreciated,
Aaron Casper
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Aaron;
You most likely have a worm W32.Blaster.Worm
DISCONNECT the subject computer from any network IMMEDIATELY.

If necessary to stop the reboot process:
Start/Run
Type "shutdown -a" ENTER

Install or enable a firewall IMMEDIATELY:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=283673

VERY IMPORTANT to follow ALL steps, closing ports or installing the
patch is NOT enough.
Download the patch and regedit referenced in the article below.
You may need to do this at an uninfected computer and burn to CD or
save on floppies.
Each file is small enough to fit on a floppy.

Follow this to clean and protect your computer:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_qr.htm#rpc

After this is resolved prevent similar occurrences by installing ALL
Critical Updates from Windows Update.
Keep antivirus up to date and run at least weekly.
Install or enable a firewall.

See also:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=826955
http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/blast.asp