The symptoms of your problems seem to be familiar with the xp antivirus 2008 2009 virus. I really recommend you scan first with SuperAntispyware from here.....http://www.superantispyware.com/ ....and then .... with SpyBlaster from here ..... http://www.download.com/SpywareBlaster/3000-8022_4-10196637.html ..... and then with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here....http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php . Using only one virus scanner is not recommended nowadays.
He's not exhibiting like 99% of the symptoms of SmitFraud... why do you think he has it? You almost definitely have a bad hard drive, one of the functions of scandisk/checkdisk is to reallocate files from bad sectors to good sectors, allowing bad hard drives to boot, but a bad hard drive is a bad hard drive, and yours sounds terrible, as though it's covered in bad sectors. I would either get a spare hard drive and attempt to install windows on that in the computer to see if it solves the problems or wipe the drive and reinstall windows, to see if the problems return.
Well the hard drive is now working. I think some files may have gotten corrupted when it restarted randomly. I did do scandisk and when I do analyze in defrag it doesnt need to be defragged. Its really good. I did scan with that superantispyware and just like i said. No viruses. One thing I've noticed is that smaller sites with few pictures will load the first try. Maybe a few images dont load correctly but the page loads. Larger pages we need to click the link then it loads for a few seconds then we hit Stop and then Reload and it will load the pages on the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time.
....for the last few months we've been having troubles with it. It has been running fine but our internet doesn't work good at all on it. ***The first indications of the xp antivirus 2008/9 on my pc began with slowing internet One thing I've noticed is that smaller sites with few pictures will load the first try. Maybe a few images dont load correctly but the page loads. *** reading #1's first post I now remember the very first problem I had was an internet image problem... We had been using IE and it just didnt work good. Pages would barely load or take a long time and somethings wouldnt show up. ***then this... It has also been restarting for no reason. ***and a few of these... Click to load a page and then the PC restarts. ***and this... It's totally random. ***...randomly...like that... I couldnt figure out the problem so I switched it to Firefox which does work better, but barely better. It still restarts and at random and can hardly load a page. ***same problems, not so bad with a clean install of another webbrowser, then the problems return... The rest of the computer runs fine. We can run other programs just fine with no restarts. Doesnt run slow either. ***if the rest of the computer runs fine why only the internet?.... and why now a problematic hard drive...? Anyways that has been the problem up until now and we plan to get a laptop to replace it but do not have the money to do such right now. And because we dont have the money to get new pc we of course have more problems. Just a short while ago my dad came to tell me the computer seems to have crapped out. It restarted on him again but would not start up. I turned it off and back on and it loads the BIOS stuff and I can get into the setup menu but I wont go to the Loading Windows screen. No weird noises or beeps at all. It just doesnt boot up. It cant be the hard drive as we just replaced it this year after the original one kicked the bucket. ***not the hard drive... So now I dont know WTH is wrong with it. Right now It is unplugged and I will look at it in the morning, but I have no clue what to look for or to check. Ah yes, I said this was urgent. Reason for that is my mom's business is done on the computer and we need it running. So if you could give me a list of possibilities of what it could be and what I can check out that would be great. Even though I doubt its the HDD's I will check those out anyways, but I dunno what it could be. Remember before restarting the pc afer removing virus etc... turn off System Restore...that is often overlooked. If having run only one antivirus and expecting that to be perfect then you can expect plenty more problems if there is a virus onboard. *** do all your virus scans in Safe Mode...all of them!
As far as an 'Antivirus XP 2008' trojan goes. It doesn't sound like he's getting spoof error messages or popups telling him to buy Antivirus XP. Either way, it's one of the things that would have been found by Kaspersky antivirus. If you really think it's an issue, see here for manual removal instructions: http://www.windowsvistaplace.com/xp-antivirus-2008-removal-instructions-xp-antivirus-2008/spyware-removal New drive or not, if it's damaged it'll crash, or at least behave badly. We had a run of bad hard drives at work from Fujitsu, where they'd used incorrect potting compound which caused the drives to fail randomly. When a drive failed while the machine was on, it would crash then try to restart, falling into a loop.
my advice would be to simply reinstall windows, grab xp sp3 stivk on your favourate free AV and anti spyware sit back and relax the reinbstall will only take a couple of hours and it will be well worth the effort for a good as new computer you'll be amazed how fast old machines can be
I never got spoof messages when I had the xp antivirus 2008 but SuperAntiSpyware removed something and so did other scanners. I agree , he should reinstall.
Sorry, we know chief, we're just mulling over the symptoms. Unfortunately they cover a wide number of scenarios, all anyone can do in your situation is try stuff and see what happens.
Best bet is just in case it is hard drive bad sectors (which seems most likely) back up all the personal data that's on the drive now while you still have access to it as if it is a bad sector the chances are its going to get worse. Also once you have backed up your data why not check to see if the Hard drive is still under warranty and if so see if you can get it replaced because it sounds like its going to fail very very shortly.
