this is an old pc i threw together strictly for interet use at my work for my other co-workers. 996 intel p3 intel d815eea2 mb 196 sdram 15g maxtor Hd. after installing windows, i installed avast antivirus. avast found several trojan viruses and removed them all. One virus in paticular kept returning in the C: drive I belive it was labeled "mx". anyway, I finally think i got rid of all of them, but now my HD is extremely fragmented and running very slow, I tried to run defrag but it seems to lock up, so i tried to get into safe mode, which locks up my pc on the black screen showing the driver files being loaded. I thought it was just taking a while but after almost 20 minutes ive decided it was locking up. i tried several times to defrag, but it keeps locking up. the HD was formatted before the OS install. is there anything I can do to get my dinosaur working again? I wanted other opinions before another install of xp. I dont really know where i picked up the viruses from. A wise man once said, "Don't listen to me!"

scobod, SWAG, sounds to me like you may possibly still have something running in the background. Safe mode should negate that? Another possibility is that one of the nasties you had before managed to change your registry and block access. Edit? HTH. Ed in Texas.

I suggest you download the maxtor diagnostic tool and check the drive integrity. If the system was freshly formatted and operating system installed clean how could it possible have been infected before you installed AV? Was the system allowed to connect to internet before installing AV? What about updates? Did you instal SP2 and all the other subsequent security patches? You could try a repair instal rather than a complete wipe & reinstal if the hardware turns out to be OK. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

yes the pc was connected to the internet prior to avast. the first and only site i went to was avast to get the software. after that all updates were installed. I will try the diagnostics tool also. if that doesnt work. i will try the reinstall. A wise man once said, "Don't listen to me!"

if you want this old pc for internet use only, why not installing some linux distro like ubuntu 6.10. give it a shot. it's way easier on system resources than your windows xp. get the image, burn onto disc and it will boot into ubuntu from cd, so you can check for hardware incompatibilities and play around with it before you install the operating system. http://www.ubuntu.com/products/GetU... Today's subliminal thought is: 'Calm down ... it's only ones and zeros.' icq 10183575