~this message is kinda long~ i'm not exactly sure which forum this should be under... anyway i've been having some computer trouble, and it is very confusing, well for me atleast. recently my hdd kinda blew up, liek it started running really fast and well made a loud noise, and stopped working. so i ordered a new one, installed it, windows xp home, norton 2005, and spysweeper. well everything was fine and good, i connected to the internet to d/l the updates for norton, then out of nowhere, a bunch of pop-ups started coming up, as if it was spyware... but i just bought a new hdd, and hadn't visited any websites. so i let it finish getting the updates, and i did full system scan... nothing came up, i searched with spy sweeper... nothing came up. then out of nowhere my computer started running fast, and well, shut off. i turned it back on and it read niether the mouse/keyboard. restarted again, it read them, for about 20 secs, then stopped, and shut itself off again. so i reformated again, and installed windows again. then came up an error, that a file was corrupt (sorry i didn't note the file name), and it said it was in a never ending loop. then shut itself off again. and wouldn't start back up.... well anyways i unhooked ide's and jumpers, replaced with a dif. motherboard, and came out with the same problem (it not starting up), so i hooked everything back up to the original motherboard, and pow, everything was working fine. windows installed, everything's happy again. i installed norton, and spysweeper again, but ihaven't hooked it up to the internet yet, i wanted to see what other people thought of this situation, because last time as soon as i hooked it up to the internet all that stuff happened. thank you, hoffin

I am not a expert by no means, but a couple of things come to mind, in your services make sure the service messenger is disabled...this is not your messenger program if you have one, this is all pop up and adware so be sure to disable it, run Adaware, spybot and virus scan..these are things that will not hurt your computer but don't know if it will help you but will not hurt..and make sure your firewall is turned on. At least this may help you till some pros get online with you.

actually i ran ran norton 2005 full scan, which i assume checks for viruses. i also later d/led sygate firewall (free trial version) because i use that on this computer i'm using now, and i said about using spy sweeper, but i also later d/led and used spybot search and destroy (again, i use that on this computer too). i'm not sure about that service messenger thing, but would that cause the later effects? i tried to find out what it was by myself back when it was only pop-ups. i did ctrl+alt+del, and saw the thing the program that was running the message, i right-click, hit go to process, and it went to crss.exe... a system file( as i'm sure u guys know...) i doubt i have the crss worm, but i suppose anything is possible...

Go to Administrative tools, Services and make sure Messenger is Disabled.

All that messenger is, is Pop Ups advertizing

'All that messenger is, is Pop Ups advertizing' - the messenger service is a tad more than that, it is used more if your pc is on a domain.

okay, all of it is working, though i'm still confused about why my computer was acting up, not starting up, etc. though whenever i plugged in the hdd, i suppose i could of unhooked some wires, and they caused that. (yeah i know this isn't hardware forum). btw, much thx to sue/mike -hoffin