Raidmax Smilodon case - 500W Power Supply
Asus P5N32-3 SLI Plus 775 NVIDIA nForce 650i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard (SLI is not in use)
GeForce 8600GTS 256Mb 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Ready SLI supported Video Card
Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Conroe 2.66Ghz LGA 775 Processor
2 G of Corsair XMS2 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 675 (PC2 5400) Dual Channel Kit Memory
(2) Seagate Barracuda ST325062ONS 250Gb 7200Rpm Sata 3Gb/s data rate (one master - one slave)
Windows XP SP3 OS
Problem: A week ago out of the blue I started having the Windows XP Support and Help Center page and the IE Help page open w/o being prompted
they would populate multiple times - up to 111 times. This happened while viewing email, working in word and excel, surfing the internet, etc.
Solutions tried:
1.) I ran Malewarebytes, Spybot, Ccleaner, Microsoft Security Essentials - found not infections. I then downloaded SUPERAntiSpyware
that it supposedly able to dig deeper into file structure and ran it - you guessed it, found nothing. I had to hold down Ctrl + Alt to
choose a program to open and then hold only Alt to pick specific functions inside the program - once the program started running if
I released the Alt key the program would quit running.
2.) Thinking I had a really "bad one" I tried to run WipeDrive but could not get the screen in DOS to quit flashing and accept commands.
3.) I removed the Lithium battery from the motherboard for 15 minutes and reinstalled it. When I booted up everything worked fine for
about an hour and then the problem started again.
4.) I bought a new hard drive - Seagate Barracuda ST310005N1A1AS-RK 1Tb 7200Rpm Sata 32Mb Cache 3Gb/s data rate - and reloaded XP,
yep I still have the same problem. So by this point I felt I had eliminated infections(new hard drive and no connection to the internet on the new hard drive).
5.) I downloaded a windows diagnostic tool for RAM/Motherboard memory to a disk on my laptop and ran it on the pc to see if maybe
the memory was going bad and causing it. I ran 19 passes on the diagnostic and passed everytime.
6.) That brings me to today. I think it may be a software problem relating to a .exe command with the HelpCtr.exe and Iexplore.exe
commands but that is outside my expertise. Hopefully someone here has ran across this before and knows of a remedy because I
am ready to start target practice in preparation for deer season after working on this for 5 days straight...LOL!
Edited by rshaffer61, 06 October 2011 - 04:27 PM.
Removed malware log as we don't use them in this forum