[kayjayd]

Originally Posted by Grease Monkey

Paul,

Speaking as someone who's worked with PCs since the IBM XT, i think you're buggered.

Could well be that your lack of XP SP2 has allowed a worm into you PC, a worm that has since wrecked your hard drive. Windows is horribly complex and the chance of diagnosing and fixing the problem without reinstalling the whole lot is minimal.

My advice, such that it is, is this:

If you have vital files that you haven't backed up, take the hard drive out of the PC and put it on a shelf. Buy a new hard drive, fit this and reinstall XP, install SP2, virus software and MS antispyware. Switch on the firewall!!

Now, and only now, can you go online and download every windows update available. When you're happy the pc is working, protected and internet capable, plug in the old hard drive and do a fill virus scan of it.

You may be able to recover some of your files at this stage.

If there are no files you need, boot XP off the CD, repartition your hard drive to totally wipe it , re format and reinstall.

(Something you might want to do, advice from an expert, make two partitions. Put programs on one, data on the other. This way if the worse happens, you can always wipe and reinstall your windows volume and leave your data safe. - Oh also you can put all of your driver files, Service Packs etc on partition 2, saves alot of swapping CDs)

Totally agree with Adrian. You're definitely wormed/virused!!! You'd be very lucky indeed if you got away without a complete re-install of XP. Also after such fatal issues on your machine it would be stupid to not do a re-install. I have in the past got away with NOT formatting the drive though, but it would be best practice to follow Adrian's advice and trash the lot and start again.

Janet & John book of computing chapter 1, page 1 - "Always backup your data". I've worked in the computer industry for 15 years and these things happen to the best of us - STILL!