I use Windows 98SE and IE 5.5I use the latest AdAware 6.0, just updated before this happened, SpyBot 1.3, also updated, SpyWareBlaster 3.1, Zone Alarm 5.x.xxx.xxx and AVG antivirus, all latest updates.
My system became rather abruptly unstable, especially during anti-virus scans with AVG. Somewhere in the middle of scanning through C:\WINDOWS it would either hang or even cause the system to jump right to reboot, yet at other times there would not be the slightest hint as to that anything is wrong with the system at all, everything would work completely normally. But then suddenly, after a certain number of opening browser windows, the system would hang, too. Next time, however, nothing - it would revert to working completely normally.
I do not know now whether these latest symptoms are or are not related to my previous question concerning my browser's home page having been hijacked by the "msn.com" bug. To me, however, it more seems as if my file system may be corrupted or just a few files. But if this is so, then the symptoms surely are confusing:
First, if I boot to the AVG anti-virus disaster recovery diskettes which I just made a week ago, there is not the slightest hint of a virus, even if all my files are scanned on the DOS level from these bootable diskettes. Then the system boots normally into Windows 98SE and again, scandisk finds nothing wrong and defragmenter works fine and ends normally.
I ran SFC once and, unfortunately, now cannot find my note with the file name it found to be "corrupted" and replaced it from the win98 folder on my Windows 98SE CD, but it was a file with "dllx.." or similar letters in it, I am really sorry I lost this information.
The symptoms are also insofar strange, as I cannot even get into Windows for many boot attempts, whereby I get the message "Windows Protection Error. You have to restart your system", yet, after turning the computer off for a few minutes, it suddenly boots again normally and the system runs as if nothing whatsoever was wrong with it.
I should add that my system was relatively very stable, rarely a blue screen of death or other forms of "hanging", before this started. Also, SFC seemed to have fixed the corrupted file and ran for few hours after that as if nothing was wrong. When I scanned the files with AVG again, however, it not only hung when scanning somewhere in the middle of the C:\WINDOWS folder, but literally caused an interrupt, so that the system "jumped" from scanning files with AVG anti-virus straight to rebooting, as if I had pressed the restart key physically.
Since then it does not want to come up at all any more, despite the fact that virus scans and scandisk from the DOS level show everything as normal.
Are these symptoms of a new virus, or do I have a deteriorating file system, which may simply be hard to diagnose, because scandisk and defragementer still complete normally? Or could I have hardware problems in the sense that it jumps to boot when a certain level of memory has been reached/overflowed? But re memory I have to say that the RAM tests also show nothing wrong, hence, except for one "corrupted" file which SFC detected, I have no other symptoms to report. What could it most likely be?
Thank you very much in advance.
Sincerely,
Bernard
