My Computer Hurts...

[El Vago]

So for the holidays my brother always comes up from LA where he works as a aerodynamics engineer. I love it when he comes up and we always have a good time together. He was the person who really got me interested into technology way back when, and for most things he still the person I go to with my tech problems. Well in this case he is the tech problem, or started it anyway.

I go out for a night with some friends, and he was going to go out with some of his later. Stuff happened and his plans fell through. So he hops on computer and starts surfing. Well apperently he started surfing torwards some more... emm.. specialty sites? cough. Anyways he was doing this in a completely unpatched Internet Explorer (I use Opera so i dont even bother patching it) Adventually he was so bombarded with pop ups and such that he decided to just power down. When it rebooted he ran Ad-Aware and such, thought he'd cleaned everything out. He didnt.

So this is my problem. Something got on, I have no idea how, where everytime Windows XP boots up now, it immedietly reboots. If I turn on the computer, the BIOS posts, it asks me if I want to boot up in safe mode and all of its variants. No matter what I pick, once XP actually tries to boot up, it shuts back down and reboots, and the process of rinse wash repeat happens. I made a Windows Boot disk on another computer, and im able to boot that up, I just have no idea what to look for so solve this problem. The only thing I know that could do this, is some .DLL file, that when adressed by Command.com in boot up, tells it to promptly shut it back down. I have no idea if this is true or not, but its the only thing I can think of. My computer specs are as follows:

Soyo PX400 Lite mobo
Intel Pentium 4 478 2.26ghz 533
512 Corsair XMS Ram
Radeon 9600 Pro 256
Audigy 2 Value
10 gig Hitachi Hard Drive (OS hard drive)
80 gig Western Digital Hard Drive (storage drive)
Windows XP Pro Corp without any service packs.

Anyways if anyone has any tips thatd be great, I think im looking at a re-format straight in the face right now, but I'm trying to avoid that.

[Wyrmslayer]

That sounds like something we had. Though for the life of me I dunno how it occured. I'd not been to any new sites for a while, or noticed anything weird get installed. Ad Aware, Nortons, McAfees and all the normal things were in place to be used as regularly, but the same problem occured on boot up.

The technical advisors I spoke to about the problem prompted me to re-format the thing. I threw my hands up and gave in, not being technically gifted enough to try anything else.

[Lumax]

I'd say get the latest versions of Spybot Search and Destroy and Ad Aware as well as a good virus scanner and try that first. Failing that, time for a reformat. Then don't let you *cough* "brother" *cough* search the pron on your PC anymore.

[El Vago]

Id love to run spyboot or a anti virus on it... just that you know it wont boot up.

[Limit]

Disconnect your modem before you boot again. Then try. If you boot fine without your modem connected, welcome to the world of the Blaster worm.

Not sure where you'd go to fix it, as they released the fix at the windows update site around ..ermm.. 8 months ago, I think.

Anyhoo...just something you might want to check.

[Mutton]

Hijack this (http://www.majorgeeks.com/download3155.html) and ask for help on a forum where people are interested in what underware your computer is wearing (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum22.html)

[Frodric]

SO it won't go to safe mode or it will boot to safe mode? IF it goes to safe mode but not normal boot I'd say Blaster is a good suspect as well. Have someone burn a blaster cleaner to a cd and then boot to safe mode if able. Install the cleaner and run it in safe mode.

[Soulcollector]

mmm aaaa oooo
format c:

naa... first of ad-aware is not as good as Search & Destroy ( even the name is better )
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html

AAAANYway... I think our doomed.... honestly, uunless you got an über unix geek friend around who knows about every little command in dos and from there knows how to make all the badies go away... then your toast

jut format it all and go on with your life

[Mutton]

oh the thing can't boot normally? Try

rename C:\Windows\system32\pagefileconfig C:\Windows\system32\pagefileconfigbak

If that doesn't work then just change the name back.