Every now and then, something would happen to one of thie files: when Explorer finally got to the file and tried to load up the little file-type icon, and error message would pop up. It said that Explorer had encountered and error and would have to close. When I clicked "OK" on that dialog window, my task bar and any Explorer windows would close, and then the taskbar would reopen after a couple seconds.
One night, my Firefox browser was starting to lag unbearably, so I decided to just go to bed. I left my computer on to "think through" everything in its own time. When I flipped my monitor back on in the morning, the Firefox window I had left open was running at a normal speed, and everything seemed fine... until I went to the "My Documents" folder and realized that it was completely empty.
Basically, I lost all of my personal files, but everything else on the computer (settings and applications) seemed untouched. It made me nervous though, so I reformatted my hard drive.
That was a week ago. I thought my troubles were over, but apparently they're not. I asked my friend to burn a CD of photographs from her digital camera. I copied the files over to my hard drive. When I was going through the photos in Explorer yesterday (to rename the files), I encountered the same problems I had before: slow icon loading and Explorer errors. These files worked without problems on her ocmputer.
On top of that, Explorer windows now spontaneously close when I try to open some of the folders that contain the pictures... this time, without any warning or dialog boxes. I double-click on the folder, the folder opens, nothing is displayed in the folder, and then it closes.
I left my computer on last night with an Explorer window, a Firefox window, and the Task Manager running. My computer was lagging for some reason, so I went to bed. In the morning, I flicked on my monitor to greet the Explorer window, the Firefox window, and eighteen Task Manager windows. I could move my mouse around, but a mouseover over any of the open windows turned the cursor into the hourglass, and I couldn't actually get the computer to do anything. Alt-TAB on the keyboard did not circle through the open windows, and Ctrl-Alt-Del did nothing. I powered off my computer by holding down the power button and restarted. There were no error messages upon restarting.
Later on today, I was entered one of the photo folders in Explorer, and the Explorer window gave me an error message. When I clicked "OK," an additional error message came up, saying there had been an error with "DrWatson postmortem debugger." This is the first time this program has been mentioned. A Google search revealed that while the program is a legitimate Windows program, the error message could be related to a Trojan... but not always.
Finally, my Firefox browser started to spontaneously close itself today. There seems to be no pattern.
I have Windows XP SP2 with the firewall running all the time. I'm running AdAware SE, SpyBot, and AVG Free on a daily basis. I ran a Panda ActiveScan and a Trend Micro House Call scan today. All scans seem to detect only seemingly harmless things like advertising cookies from websites and MRUs.
I'm concerned about whether this problem is related to my own files (if they're corrupted), my system files, or if it could be a hardware problem.
Anyway, here's the HijackThis log. Thanks in advance for your help.
Logfile of HijackThis v1.99.1
Scan saved at 5:53:43 PM, on 10/21/2005
Platform: Windows XP SP2 (WinNT 5.01.2600)
MSIE: Internet Explorer v6.00 SP2 (6.00.2900.2180)
Running processes:
C:\WINDOWS\System32\smss.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\winlogon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\services.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\lsass.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\spoolsv.exe
C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgamsvr.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgupsvc.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\nvsvc32.exe
C:\windows\system\hpsysdrv.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\hpztsb05.exe
C:\Program Files\Picasa2\PicasaMediaDetector.exe
C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_04\bin\jusched.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgcc.exe
C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgemc.exe
C:\WINDOWS\ALCXMNTR.EXE
C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe
C:\WINDOWS\System32\svchost.exe
C:\WINDOWS\Explorer.EXE
C:\HijackThis\HijackThis.exe
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://srch-us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Bar = http://srch-us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://srch-us8.hpwis.com/
R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = https://www.google.c...1<mpl=default
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://srch-us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Bar = http://srch-us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://srch-us8.hpwis.com/
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://us8.hpwis.com/
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Connection Wizard,ShellNext = http://us8.hpwis.com/
O2 - BHO: (no name) - {53707962-6F74-2D53-2644-206D7942484F} - C:\PROGRA~1\SPYBOT~1\SDHelper.dll
O2 - BHO: (no name) - {DE3F93E2-35B0-4AA5-BAD8-2623EEEC4B12} - C:\PROGRA~1\Gogosoft\GOGOEX~1\GE.GIS
O3 - Toolbar: hp toolkit - {B2847E28-5D7D-4DEB-8B67-05D28BCF79F5} - C:\HP\EXPLOREBAR\HPTOOLKT.DLL
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [hpsysdrv] c:\windows\system\hpsysdrv.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [HotKeysCmds] C:\WINDOWS\System32\hkcmd.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Recguard] C:\WINDOWS\SMINST\RECGUARD.EXE
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [NvCplDaemon] RUNDLL32.EXE C:\WINDOWS\System32\NvCpl.dll,NvStartup
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [nwiz] nwiz.exe /installquiet /keeploaded /nodetect
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [PS2] C:\WINDOWS\system32\ps2.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [HPDJ Taskbar Utility] C:\WINDOWS\System32\spool\drivers\w32x86\3\hpztsb05.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [UpdateManager] "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Sonic\Update Manager\sgtray.exe" /r
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [Picasa Media Detector] C:\Program Files\Picasa2\PicasaMediaDetector.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [SunJavaUpdateSched] C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_04\bin\jusched.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AVG7_CC] C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgcc.exe /STARTUP
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AVG7_EMC] C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgemc.exe
O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [AlcxMonitor] ALCXMNTR.EXE
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [NVIEW] rundll32.exe nview.dll,nViewLoadHook
O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [ctfmon.exe] C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe
O4 - Global Startup: Adobe Gamma Loader.lnk = C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Calibration\Adobe Gamma Loader.exe
O4 - Global Startup: Adobe Reader Speed Launch.lnk = C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 7.0\Reader\reader_sl.exe
O9 - Extra button: (no name) - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_04\bin\npjpi150_04.dll
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Sun Java Console - {08B0E5C0-4FCB-11CF-AAA5-00401C608501} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.5.0_04\bin\npjpi150_04.dll
O9 - Extra button: AIM - {AC9E2541-2814-11d5-BC6D-00B0D0A1DE45} - C:\Program Files\AIM\aim.exe
O9 - Extra button: Messenger - {FB5F1910-F110-11d2-BB9E-00C04F795683} - C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
O9 - Extra 'Tools' menuitem: Windows Messenger - {FB5F1910-F110-11d2-BB9E-00C04F795683} - C:\Program Files\Messenger\msmsgs.exe
O16 - DPF: {17492023-C23A-453E-A040-C7C580BBF700} (Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool) - http://go.microsoft....k/?linkid=39204
O16 - DPF: {74D05D43-3236-11D4-BDCD-00C04F9A3B61} (HouseCall Control) - http://a840.g.akamai...all/xscan53.cab
O16 - DPF: {9A9307A0-7DA4-4DAF-B042-5009F29E09E1} (ActiveScan Installer Class) - http://acs.pandasoft...free/asinst.cab
O20 - Winlogon Notify: igfxcui - C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\igfxsrvc.dll
O23 - Service: AVG7 Alert Manager Server (Avg7Alrt) - GRISOFT, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgamsvr.exe
O23 - Service: AVG7 Update Service (Avg7UpdSvc) - GRISOFT, s.r.o. - C:\PROGRA~1\Grisoft\AVGFRE~1\avgupsvc.exe
O23 - Service: InstallDriver Table Manager (IDriverT) - Macrovision Corporation - C:\Program Files\Common Files\InstallShield\Driver\11\Intel 32\IDriverT.exe
O23 - Service: NVIDIA Driver Helper Service (NVSvc) - NVIDIA Corporation - C:\WINDOWS\System32\nvsvc32.exe