This is kind of a multiple problem. First off, several months ago I installed a Western Digital HD (this was installed after memory had laready been upgraded) and had upgraded my memory to 64Mb (DIMMS). Shortly after the memory was installed, warnings appeared that there was not enough memory, which I knew was untrue. I wondered if perhaps they set the DIMMS setting incorrectly. Next, no matter what applications were open, they would begin to 'smear' and everything would freeze where there is no choice but to reboot. This would happen several times. Finally, doing some poking around in DOS, I received a message that there was a virus in the boot sector of my HD. I use Norton Anti-Virus and PCcillian, which neither had caught this virus. Anyway, I know that I am at a point that I will have to completely reformat my HD and reinstall windows. My question is this, will reformatting wipe out this virus? And what would cause the applications to smear (provided that the virus was not present at the time)? My system is 233Mhz, 13.0GB HD, 64Mb RAM, 4Mb shared video (No video card...pNp). Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Well, depending on what version of windows, depends on what you should do. OK first off the virus thingy YES formatting will get rid of it, as long as you haven't got infected dos disks. However a really nice way to get rid of it, is to use a descent virus checker killer. Eg VET...www.cybec.com.au Now the virus may be the cause of things slowing down, however virtual memory in windows is also another player, as is the recycle bin if you are win 9x. if you email me, and give me more detials I should have all the answers for you graeme@mira.net

Hi, If there is really a boot virus as you suggested then formating not kill it, because neither format nor Fdisk rewrite Master Boot Record where boot virus resides. Try to boot with diskette (known as clean from virus) and use FDISK /MBR command to rewrite Master Boot. Then check your drive with anti virus software. Good luck, Igor M

Thank you Igor M and Graeme I will try the suggestions. To clarify some things, I had Win 95 installed, but when I reinstall, I will be installing Win 98 (full version). But yes, the message was that there was a virus detected in the boot sector of my HD. Again thank you for responding so quickly. I really appreciate it because I know just enough about hardware to make me dangerous at this point! From one techie to another :)

Hi, Forget to mention. This message about virus in boot sector can be from BIOS virus protection system. When you reinstall Windows and it tries to rewrite boot sector BIOS reports possible virus activity. This is a normal behavior for BIOS, but isn't very good for Windows installation. You better look in your BIOS settings and disable Boot Virus Protection if it's enabled. As for this smearing, I think most probable cause is a bad memory chip. Try to replace your new DIMM if you have a possibility or check it out in another computer. Good luck, Igor M