XP Pro Annoyance - any ideas?

[Warewolf]

Apparently I was hacked last night (which is surprising since the router my
network uses has a hardware-based firewall) Fortunately, the hacker only
did two (noticable) things - one was to change the icon for Word (easily
fixed) and the other is something that has become rather annoying.

Whenever I restart my computer now, everything boots up fine but then
Windows Installer activates and tries to 'repair' Norton Systemworks 2005.
After this attempt, Norton will deliver a message (up to three times)
saying that it doesn't support the 'Repair' feature.

I have already checked for viruses (I did this the _very_first_time_ the
problem occured) and spyware (via Spybot and AdAware 6) and even did a
check for anything unusual via 'msconfig' but, so far, the problem keeps
coming up.

So again, any ideas on how to solve this little problem?

If it will help things along, I'm using a (legitimate) copy of Windows XP
Pro that has Service Pack 1 installed.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Signed,
Warewolf

 

[Jupiter Jones [MVP]]

Reboot
Completely uninstall Norton.
Reboot then reinstall Norton.

How do you know a hacker got in?
"the hacker only did two (noticable) things"
You should be more concerned about what you do not notice.
If there was a hacker, it may be impossible to determine what was done.
If you can not determine EXACTLY what was done, you can NEVER be sure:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/hack.htm

 

[Warewolf]

Reboot
Completely uninstall Norton.
Reboot then reinstall Norton.

If I find a way to do it, I'll give it a try (there is no way to
uninstall Systemworks via the [Start] menu or [Add/Remove Programs]) but
there is also a possiblity that doing so will do more harm than good.

How do you know a hacker got in?

It's an 'educated guess' on my part. {:^)

I, actually, have quite a bit of experience with computers (started on an
Apple II and then worked my way through Win 3.1 and 98 before finally
upgrading to XP) so when the problem surfaced, I figured it was either

a) someone using an undiscovered security hole (which, if Microsoft is to
be believed, can even cause problems to computers that use a firewall)
b) a bug in Windows XP (probably from one of the latest 'security fixes')
or
c) a side-effect of the latest 'anti-piracy measure', StarForce, that (in
spite of dozens of reported problems) continues to be used as a method of
verifying the CDs used by a lot of popular games. (I purchased and
installed one of these games, Beyond Divinity, yesterday)

In fact, it's the first theory that lead me to post a question to this
group - back when I using Windows 98, I used to make adjustments to its
autoexec.bat file to make working with it a lot easier. If it's possible
for me to tweak Win98 to work better, it could also be possible for
someone to tweak XP, via a 'security hole', to perform an unnecessary bit
of 'maintenance'.

"the hacker only did two (noticable) things"
You should be more concerned about what you do not notice.
If there was a hacker, it may be impossible to determine what was done.
If you can not determine EXACTLY what was done, you can NEVER be sure:

You raise a good point but, again, aside from the two problems I
mentioned, I haven't encountered any ill effects. Still, I'll back up
all of my important files (yet again) in case something worse occurs.

Thanks again for the help.

Signed,
Warewolf