Hello, I'll try to give some background to fully explain the situation,
forgive me if it runs long. I've got a Dell Dimenion 4400 1.6, 1000MB RAM 19GB
hardrive, running winXP. I ran my virus scanner (Fixit Utilities4) a couple
weeks ago and it showed I had a trojan horse: TROJ_STARTPAGE.W in two different
files, which the program couldn't clean. I went online to trendmicro to get
info and followed their steps to remove it (removing various autostart entries
from the registry). After completing this the trojans were still there. I
went out and bought McAfee virusscan 2004 thinking maybe a newer different
software would do it. It didn't. I finally ended up deleting the two files
that the scan said were infected: C: programfiles\common files\microsoft
shared\msinfo\info32.exe and C: windows\system32\tapicfg.exe. I then ran
the all in one system checkup with Fixit utilities which scans the drive,
registry, etc. This takes awhile so did it before going somewhere. When I
returned the program had frozen. I was unable to ctrl-alt-delete or get the
computer to shut off with the power button so had to unplug and plug back in.
After restarting trying to open anything resulted in the computer running
incredibly slow, hourglass icon just sitting there. I could move the cursor
but nothing happened. Tried to ctrl-alt-delete unsuccessfully and again had to
disconnect the power to get it to shut off. After numerous episodes of this I
booted from the winxp cd and ran the repair install. Now everytime it boots
the harddrive beeps once and freezes on the welcome screen. If I
crtl-alt-deleteI get a message about the paging file being to small. I
followed the instructions to change this restarted but every restart it gives
me the beep and freezes on welcome then gives me the same paging error. I have
run the diagnostics on the hard drive by dbl-clicking going to properties, etc.
and it doesn't show any problems. If I try to run my Fixit program it
immediately closes when I select a scan to do. The McAfee program at start up
tells me that the virus scanner is expired even though I just installed it a
week ago. Anytime I try to open any Mcafee program I immediately get a crash
message and have to terminate the application. When I try to go online to
update it I can not access the internet. I can stay within my ISP (email,
newsgroups, etc.) but it won't go to any web sites. I've reinstalled my
internet software to no avail. I use both compuserve and AOL 9.0. On
compuserve attempting to access the internet it shows page loading but it never
loads. On AOL it immediately tells me there was a problem and aol is
restarting. It reconnects me but if I try to access the internet the same
thing happens. I have been able to play StarWars Jedi outcast with no problem
or sluggishness, but just opening system files or other programs and it just
runs unbelievably slow or not at all and I continually have to restart. I've
tried to uninstall McAfee to see if it was causing a conflict but I can't
because clicking on it even in unistall hardware/programs causes a crash. I've
tried to boot in safemode (f

but it just beeps once or twice a screen pops up
for half a second and it goes to loading then the welcome screen. I haven't
recently installed any new drivers or hardware or anything that I can think are
the root of the problem. I can boot to BIOS and when I go through it it
doesn't look like anything is setup wrong although I don't know much about the
BIOS. I've tried to boot from the Fixit CD and run scandisk but my drive
doesn't show up on the select a drive to scan screen. If I just click scan
anyway it says it couldn't access drive C. I don't want to have to reformat
the drive, especially if this won't solve the problem, but am wondering if this
is my only remaining option.
Again I'm sorry for the long post, just want to give as much info as I can
hoping someone can give me some help as I am at the end of my rope. Any help
would be GREATLY appreciated.