[bill4444]

Hello,

I posted this in the malware section a little over a week ago, but have gotten no responses. I'm posting here as this may now be an OS issue.

About a month ago, my wife’s computer (running XP) started having performance problems and she started getting a lot more internet popups. I found that I had let her virus protection expire, so I started bringing things up to date. I installed Avira AntiVir, disabled Norton, and scanned. Lots of ‘stuff’ was found and removed. I then installed Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and ran a deep scan which found ~50 items it was able to quarantine. Next, I installed Comodo Firewall and disabled the Windows Firewall. After cycling through the scans and rebooting a few times, the system seemed to be running much better. However, over the next few days I became suspicious of twex.exe as either Avira or Malwarebytes would occasionally flag it. Avira is running every night, so I’d kick off Malwarebytes every couple days and things would seem to go back to normal.

I was going to ask for help at that point, but I wanted to follow the ‘malware cleaning guide’ first. So about a week ago, I installed and ran ATF Cleaner which cleared out a bunch of stuff, System Restore, and ERUNT. I reran Malwarebytes and I seem to recall that it found a few items, but I can’t recall what. I then downloaded the install files for Hijack This, but did not install and run as I wanted to see if the issues were resolved.

When I checked the system yesterday (1/30) evening, the screen was blank and the light on the CD drive was flashing roughly every second. I couldn’t get it to come back using the keyboard, so I held the power button. After ~10 seconds, I restarted. After a minute or so, I kicked off Avira which triggered a reboot. Each time I tried running Avira, Malwarebytes, or install Hijack This, the system rebooted, but ATF Cleaner ran fine. So I tried to boot in safe mode. Holding F8 didn’t give me the menu, so I set it through msconfig. Ever since, I can’t get XP to launch. What have I done? Help! …please.

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so I set it through msconfig

That's the best way to get stuck in Safe Mode.

1. If you have Windows CD, follow the steps from here: http://icrontic.com/...pair_windows_xp

2. If you don't have Windows CD...
Download Windows Recovery Console: http://www.thecomput...om/files/rc.iso
Download, and install free Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.c...hp?act=download
Using Imgburn, burn rc.iso to a CD.
Boot to the CD...let it finish loading.
When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Then, follow the steps from here: http://icrontic.com/...pair_windows_xp, starting below this picture on page 1:

[Broni]

so I set it through msconfig

That's the best way to get stuck in Safe Mode.

1. If you have Windows CD, follow the steps from here: http://icrontic.com/...pair_windows_xp

2. If you don't have Windows CD...
Download Windows Recovery Console: http://www.thecomput...om/files/rc.iso
Download, and install free Imgburn: http://www.imgburn.c...hp?act=download
Using Imgburn, burn rc.iso to a CD.
Boot to the CD...let it finish loading.
When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
Then, follow the steps from here: http://icrontic.com/...pair_windows_xp, starting below this picture on page 1:

[bill4444]

Hello Broni,

Thanks for the very quick reply. Sorry for not getting back sooner, but I was unable to try your suggestion until this weekend. I was unable to boot from either my windows CD or the rc.iso CD. I attempted the rc.iso CD on my laptop to confirm I burned it correctly and it worked fine. In the process, it struck me that I couldn’t get into the bios either. In fact, POST was just flashing on the screen. So I began to suspect a hardware issue. This had crossed my mind, but this seemed to start out as a virus related issue and I was trying to stick with a single diagnosis rather than multiple issues at once.

So I switched out the motherboard from another system and tried booting…similar result. I then switched the video card as well and the system booted to the BSOD. I’m reading up on where to go from here.

[Broni]

What does BSOD say?

[bill4444]

I didn't write down the paragraphs at the top, but the error code was:

STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF7905528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

Hopefully that's enough to go on.

[Broni]

Does it say Stop 0x0000007B: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE?
Normally...
This Windows stop error indicates that Windows XP Professional is unable to access the boot volume or system partition of your harddrive during startup.
Installing incorrect drivers for your harddrives or updating the storage adapter hardware usually causes this error. It is also possible that the boot volume or system partition was damaged either by hardware failure or a virus infection.
Since you replaced motherboard....RAM?

[bill4444]

I restarted the system to get the full message. It is as follows:

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps:

Check for viruses on your computer. Remove any newly installed hard drives or hard drive controllers. Check your hard drive to make sure it is properly configured and terminated. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000007B (oxF7905528, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

I changed the motherboard, processor, and RAM, and the video card.

I'm thinking I should boot from the XP CD, see if I can access the harddrive, run a virus/malware scan, and then CHKDSK on my C: drive. Sound reasonable?

[Broni]

It does.