Window xp on a dell 1.7 ghz pentium 4. I started the computer and braudband loaded like usual. Black Ice was also running. A screen came up asking for a windows update. Proceeded with update and black ice came up saying there maybe somekind of attack. Proceed, quarentine or continue came up. something like that. clicked continue and same error came up. Ended up shutting computer down. Started win xp up again and went into my profile as usual. Desktop comes up for a few seconds and here it begins. The desktop icons and taskbar diappear and then come back. They just flicker on and off. You cannot do ctl,alt,delete. As they appear you can click on anything but about the time you do everthing flickers off again and what you clicked on closes. Start menu and so on. Tried going to a previous date that you can find in the system tools but did not work. Tried msconfig and stopped all startup items but same thing. Tried to go to safe mode to try and find what might be causing the problem but nothing I can see. I have no idea what to do. Can anyone help. I have given all info that I know. This is a friend of mines computer. Tried to describe as I was told. If you need more info. I can probably find out. This person has no internet access because of course there computer is usless now. Any help would be great. Thanks.

well first thing first, unplug the network cable (internet connection cable) from the wall socket. second you'll need some antivirus disk (with latest updates) don't use norton, use like pc-cillin (www.antivirus.com) or mcafee (www.mcafee.com) and you can download them free from the net for 30 days. install the antivirus software on the OTHER computer that is working fine and ALSO NO VIRUSES. create antivirus boot disk on a floppy with NO VIRUSES. then boot up the useless computer with boot disk you've just created (i'm assuming here you are using winxp and is FAT32 format for the hard drive) if you are using NTFS the best way will be to reformat the harddrive. if you don't know how, there are MANY articles about formatting the harddrive with NTFS file system in this forum. continue with the story, let the antivirus boot disk do the job and see if there any virus. after that boot up the computer in normal way and see what happens. if still the same, it could be something wrong with the system files or somebody already hacked your computer. in either case the best way is to reformat the harddrive. hope that'll help with reformatting the drive, AL