XP slow, SP1 hungry

[Dedalus]

I have a presario 5080 US, celeron, 800Mhz, 512 MB... originally had
ME, upgraded to XP when it was first released. reinstalled once or
twice, can't remember exactly whether it was clean or an upgrade...
but anyway:

Installed SP1 long time ago. other than annoying quirks (rampant
freezes in word and IE, periodic empying of my Outlook inbox), seemed
to work moderately well. last week, I seemed to have picked up an
unknown piece of software (forgot that I'd disabled NAV). I
uninstalled it (had alerts in german... crazy) and ran adaware.
afterward, computer has been creeping at snail's pace, windows leaving
trails, and HD is constantly churning, like something's running in
background. nothing was using much CPU except SRVPAK, which was sky
high. I disabled it, and computer ran smoothly and quietly.

questions:
-might I have recruited a virus? I plan on reinstalling norton.
-does anyone think I should uninstall and reinstall (in safe mode this
time perhaps) SP1?

help is much appreciated, thanks.

 

[Mike]

I would reinstall Norton and make sure that you have the
most current Virus Definitions and then scan the system,
before you do anything else.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Sounds like you do have a virus. I don't think installing norton AV will do it though
since most new viruses can turn off detection if installed prior to norton.
go to an antivirus site and run a scan online (they can't be shut off by the virus as easily)

I use http://housecall.antivirus.com it will detect and remove viruses pretty well.

good luck

 

[Dedalus]

reinstalled and updated NAV -- found 11 infected files. quarantined
all but one -- trojan.backdoor -- which is tied to my SP1 and can't be
deleted, even in safe mode. so I took out SP1 with system restore off,
with the intention of reinstalling it, but now windows update doesn't
recognize my system ('version doesn't match,' etc etc). also, NAV says
I have the blaster worm and can't delete it -- my computer crashes
periodically with a warning and a countdown (an alert about RPC
termination).

I'll try the online scan -- thanks for that tip. any other advice
would be most appreciated.

 

[Santa's Helper]

To stop the Blaster Worm:
First, stop the bug from running by hitting CTRL-ALT-DELETE and
bringing up the task manager. Look for msblast.exe in the list, and
kill it. Now your computer won't shut down, but the bug is still there
and will run the next time you start your machine. Go to this URL to
find out how to get rid of it:
<http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.re
moval.tool.html>



See www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_qr.htm#rpc
<http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/xp_qr.htm> for a quick removal tool for the
MSBlast worm and a link to the Microsoft patch to prevent future infection.
Then update your antivirus software and scan your system.

 

[Dedalus]

finally got rid of trojan... installed the blaster patch, but when I
rebooted to run the tool, it couldn't find blaster. don't know what
the deal is, but I'll scan from online next.

as for update recognizing my system: will temporarily disabling norton
and my firewall make the difference, does anyone think? seems risky
but that might've been what I did last time. wish I could remember...

anyway, thanks for all your help. cybershots on me all around.