[lacers5]

ok...the xp pro is now gone from startup, and the 2nd one wouldn't work when i tried to boot it up...something about it needing to be repaired, so i used the first one......

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Do you remember the exact name of any of the documents you want to recover? If so, do a search for one of them and see where it's found...note the location...if they are anywhere on the C: drive, we should be able to recover them.

I seems you are booting to the original installation...this is actually what we want. Let's go ahead and remove the last line in the boot.ini.

Open Control Panel and double click on "System". Under the "Advanced" tab, in the "Startup and Recovery" section, click on the "Settings" button. Click on the "Edit" button in the next window. In the notepad document, select and delete the line of text in red:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

[wannabe1]

Do you remember the exact name of any of the documents you want to recover? If so, do a search for one of them and see where it's found...note the location...if they are anywhere on the C: drive, we should be able to recover them.

I seems you are booting to the original installation...this is actually what we want. Let's go ahead and remove the last line in the boot.ini.

Open Control Panel and double click on "System". Under the "Advanced" tab, in the "Startup and Recovery" section, click on the "Settings" button. Click on the "Edit" button in the next window. In the notepad document, select and delete the line of text in red:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

[lacers5]

i do know the exact names of the files and pics that i want to retrieve, and i did a search for them with this windows and they are gone??.....

[lacers5]

ooooooooooh...i just did another search and they are all on drive c.....YAAAAAYY!! i will delete the other xp home then

[wannabe1]

Ok...Good!

Now reboot...it should boot right to the good XP installation. Then try to open one of your files. If you get an error, let me know what it is.

[lacers5]

i am still getting the system shutdown notice and windows shuts down after a minute. (details in my first post).

[wannabe1]

It doesn't boot to Windows? Or does it boot to Windows with the error?

[lacers5]

it boots to windows, then after everything on the desktop loads, there is an error and it shuts down

[wannabe1]

This is probably malware...there are a couple of different worms that can cause this. Does this happen if you boot into safe mode?

[wannabe1]

Reboot and the next time you get the message and while the countdown is running, click Start, then Run, and type shutdown -a (Note the space before -a), and click "Ok". This will abort the shut down.

While you are running, download, install, update, and run a scan with Avast!. Set avast to run a boot time scan...it will ask if you want to do this when you install. This will ba s totally manual scan, so you will have to sit and tell it to delete each nasty it finds or place it in the chest if delete is not an option.

If you get the error again, use the shutdown -a command again and go to the Malware Forum and follow the instructions at the top....Especially the Start Here.

That will give you several steps that will help you clean up 70 percent of all problems by yourself...then post a hijackthis log in THAT forum. Be patient, the Malware Forum is a very busy place and a two or three day wait is not unusual. DO NOT REPLY TO OR BUMP YOUR OWN LOG. If it shows a reply it may be overlooked as one that is being worked on.

[lacers5]

no, it is not happening in safe mode.

[lacers5]

but, even in safe mode, spy sherriff keeps coming up

[lacers5]

now the start menu won't even show up! everything on the desktop does....but i can't get to the start menu (even if i press the windows key!)

[wannabe1]

You must have one nasty infection!

Is the machine running without the shutdown message, though?

[lacers5]

in safe mode it runs for a while, but it ends up shutting down...but it takes so long to run (in safe mode) that i keep missing why it shuts down