Initial attack was detected by McAffee and supposedly dealt with.
But one consequence was that the network was whacked. TCP/IP protocol was non-functional. And it was not possible to uninstall/reinstall as advised on a number of other posts I read.
Also, I found that if I ever attempted to start in Safe Mode, the keyboard was non-functional (separate post on that), so I was never able to follow various other protocols that have been described.
In exasperation (and probably this was a mistake), I tried booting from the WinXP distribution disk and have it "repair" itself. After copying many files, setting up and saving the configuration, rebooting, and going through many more installation steps, I got a BSOD with this info: BAD_POOL_CALLER
STOP: 0X00C2 (0x0007, 0x0CD4, 0x00340045, 0xE167A11C)
Have restarted several times with the same result. Now it is no longer possible to start in Safe Mode.
There is more verbiage that I did not include which has to do with recently installed devices--in my case there are none. The only device I have that was not factory installed is an external USB disk and that is not new.
Other posts I have seen on BAD_POOL_CALLER suggest using Memtest86+ to test memory. I tried following the instructions but have not succeed in making a bookable CD that works. But I have no reason to believe there is a memory fault anyway.
Right now it seems I have exhausted my options. Can anyone help. Please...? Thanks!!