tri1ogy

Join Date 01/2005

Hmph...that was fun :p

Hardware or trojan

Hopefully my PC in online for good again.

Two weeks ago, my HP (XP) shut itself down for no apparent reason. I had a 7Mb file that I was working on in PS, plus notepad to jot down some notes. I minimized both windows, went to the bathroom, came back to open up notepad again, and poof - hard shutdown.

I tried the power button again. Fans kicked on, HD started spinning, beeps, lights...the normal things. Once my screen ticked (as if it were turning on to show boot process), it would do a hard shutdown again. I finally ended up removing the side and front covers to clean the inside (clean, dry towel of course) and to check for loose connections. Tried power button again...same-o.

Eventually, a neighbor and I were looking at it, and came to the conclusion that it must've been a short in the power button wires (about the only wires not checked). If I played with the wires, I could 'work' between 20 minutes and four hours at a time.

About 3-4 days ago, 2 things happened. (1) I noticed that the ground wire appeared farther from its connector than the others - so I pushed it closer. (2) Norton AV found a trojan hours later (loader.exe), so I quarantined it.

Everything seems to be running fine again. With both happenings occurring in the same day, Im still not sure what the problem was. Plus, after a week of family visiting as well, Im back to skinning. Hopefully from all this info, someone can give some insight about this (more like hardware problems, or 'just' an infection?).

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Also, Nortons was pre-installed, but mostly I turn it off and use AVG. Cant remember why I disabled AVG that day (I do remeber this).

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NightTrainthedark

Join Date 07/2003

+255

Some info on loader.exe. Might help , might not. Good luck.

http://www.liutilities.com/products/wintaskspro/processlibrary/loader/

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1845

My Neice had that one..... having a 14 year old girl's homepage redirected to 'gays with bigger penises' was not kewl.

I off-loaded her schoolwork and reformatted,,,,

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http://majorgeeks.com/CWShredder_Last_Merijn_Version_d4086.html to CWSShredder. Might be of help since that virus is associated with the CWS Hijacker

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Good info Night Train. Nothing like that happened, which leads me to believe it was more hardware related. PSU perhaps??? Thanks for the link and for your help.

No, definitely not cool Jafo.

Too bad reformatting was necessary.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1845

Wasn't necessary...but was simply...'Dust off and nuke 'em from space....only way to be sure'

BTW....her machine was Win98se ....and it also failed to boot....due to the virus...

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Thanks tjesterb. I have that somewhere, but various scans say everything else is okey-dokey.

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Wasn't necessary...only way to be sure'

Ah. So true, so true.

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Corky_O

Join Date 04/2004

Here is a wattage requirement calculator to see if you have under-power issues Link

If not the trojan, I would go with the power system or cooling system.

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