I've been trying to figure this out for months and nothing's working. When I try to run chkdsk (I've tried with the /f switch and the /r switch) at boot, it exits out saying that Windows can't access the drive because it's locked. There is also two directories on the drive that I can't access (minint and the driver cache). When I try it says access denied. Malwarebytes reports that one of the dlls that is in both directories is malware. I even went as far as to try to delete the files using a Linux live cd but it reports the same access denied message for those directories. This computer did have symantec antivirus on it when I got it which I had to force uninstall because it was password locked and so that may have something to do with it.

zephalis, suspect it all goes back to Norton's. It's notoriously hard to delete as it uses files with odd names saved in odd places. It won't clear out with ADD/REMOVE. There's an uninstaller available in the proggie. Re download, install and run it? There's also a stand alone uninstaller available for download @: http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPOR... HTH. Ed in Texas.