XP pro hacked?????

[Guest]

Hello,

Last week my computer began shutting down automatically sometime throughout the night. It booted back up just fine a couple of times. Then the account names on the log on screen were gone. I hit ctrl + alt + del twice to bring up the classic log on, I typed the admin account name and password and it said it could not log me on. I tried my user name and password with the same result. When I tried my wife's account and password it worked. Unfortunately I had set her account to user status so it does not have admin rights. Through many hours of searching, chatting, and reading I have determined that the only accounts left on my machine are the Help Assistant and my wife's. The admin account and my user account have been deleted! They are definately gone, I have verified this with a password reset boot disk, it cant even find the accounts to change the passwords, so I concluded they are not there. This is obviously a problem since I can no longer update Windows or any other program. I cannot even download and install new programs

One might say, no problem, just format and re-install. Well I can't do that without admin rights. Boot into safe mode? Nope, when I hit F8 at the BIOS display and continuously throughout booting, nothing happens. NO safe mode option. System restore is not an option without admin rights. I have run anti virus programs, anti trojan programs, and anti spyware programs to no avail. How about booting from the Win XP cd-rom? OK I tried that too, it just loads right to the log on screen, it doesn't ask me what I want to do. How about running the disk from inside windows? Ok that works, but without admin rights I cant actually do anything

Resolution
1. Remove hard drives from existing machine, slave them in another machine and format. This should work right
2. Use my shotgun to tweak the OS a bit
3. ??????????? Is there anything else I can do? Has anyone ever even heard of this? No one I have talked to has heard of this problem. It isn't posted on the net anywhere that I can find.

 

[Lanwench [MVP - Exchange]]

You could boot from the XP CD and do a repair install....

Did you have your firewall enabled? Good AV software? Run Windows Update
regularly? Backup your data folders?

 

[M Smith]

You say you can not format and re-install without admin rights, you do not
need any rights on the computer whatso ever to do that. Just make sure
you`ve set the computer to boot from the cd-rom drive in the BIOS and
Windows Install should just boot up from the CD. Then you can just format
the hard drive and re-install windows without a problem.

Hello,

Last week my computer began shutting down automatically sometime

throughout the night. It booted back up just fine a couple of times. Then
the account names on the log on screen were gone. I hit ctrl + alt + del
twice to bring up the classic log on, I typed the admin account name and
password and it said it could not log me on. I tried my user name and
password with the same result. When I tried my wife's account and password
it worked. Unfortunately I had set her account to user status so it does not
have admin rights. Through many hours of searching, chatting, and reading I
have determined that the only accounts left on my machine are the Help
Assistant and my wife's. The admin account and my user account have been
deleted! They are definately gone, I have verified this with a password
reset boot disk, it cant even find the accounts to change the passwords, so
I concluded they are not there. This is obviously a problem since I can no
longer update Windows or any other program. I cannot even download and
install new programs.

One might say, no problem, just format and re-install. Well I can't do

that without admin rights. Boot into safe mode? Nope, when I hit F8 at the
BIOS display and continuously throughout booting, nothing happens. NO safe
mode option. System restore is not an option without admin rights. I have
run anti virus programs, anti trojan programs, and anti spyware programs to
no avail. How about booting from the Win XP cd-rom? OK I tried that too, it
just loads right to the log on screen, it doesn't ask me what I want to do.
How about running the disk from inside windows? Ok that works, but without
admin rights I cant actually do anything.

Resolution:
1. Remove hard drives from existing machine, slave them in another machine

and format. This should work right?

2. Use my shotgun to tweak the OS a bit.
3. ??????????? Is there anything else I can do? Has anyone ever even heard

of this? No one I have talked to has heard of this problem. It isn't posted
on the net anywhere that I can find.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the replies, I have formatted and re-installed. However before I did so, when I tried to format, I recieved an error message that read access is denied. I think it was part of the virus/trojan whatever it was. I plan to run to a smoothwall comp in addition to my NAT router. Thank you again.