Dell - XPS Laptop
XP Pro SP2
3.6GHz HT P4
2GB 3200 DDR
60GB 7200 RPM
9800 ATI
Just the other day my system was faster than anything I usally see as a computer sales/tech associate. The problem started after insterting my thumb drive. Avast poped up and told me that it found a w32.trojen (gen) but couldnt delete. I rebooted to enter safe mode and waited, and waited. After 5 min it finaly allowed me to log in. Now all my windows, programs and boot up run as slow as my grandmother! There is heavy TCP/IP connection attempts (currently blocking using sygate). Fustrating! So I ran avast (nothing), AVG(nothing), Panda(nothing), Micro Trend(nothing), Microsoft Spyware Beta (nothing), Ad Aware (nothing), Spybot (nothing), Hijack this (nothing). F*CK! So Iused regedit and find, you quessed it, nothing in run, run once, run services, or any hooks as far as I can tell… OK, now I am anoyed… About this time I discovered it is on my thumb drive, so at a computer in work I format it. BUT it leaves 2kB untouched, no files or anything just 2kB used… Hmmm! This is why I think it is a boot up virus so I run a tool on my laptop that logs any file access and note that when almost any exe file runs it always opens something at a very low hd sector (activity I have not witnessed on healthy comps). As a computer tech this is the first time that I cant even get the name down… If anyone has had this problem or any recommendations I am all ears! I have been thinking about using fixboot and fixmbr but I have not had an opertunity yet. Even if that works any ideas how to get it off my thumb drive? Thanks in advance… ???