I had some issues with a virus or something that dropped a bunch of exes onto my desktop and all throughout my hdd. I posted on another forum and ther person who helped me said I probably had a backdoor too. Their solution was to just reformat. Prior to that I wasnt using any kind of firewall. I cleaned up as much as I could and then decided to get zonealarm. I ran zone alarms virus and spyware scans and foudn a bunch of things that I didnt find with other programs. I cleaned all of those up as well. However it was adding winlogon.exe as one of the files that was infected. This wasnt winlogin.exe or some other file in another folder, this was winlogon.exe. Well it was highlighted with "Delete on reboot" next to it. I rebooted many times after installing zonealarm but it would always show up in the list of infected files/viruses. Last night I downloaded updates for xp and then rebooted for those updates. After doing that my computer would start up and then do nothing and start up again. The same happens in safemode. Ive been on this laptop (Windows ME...), trying to find a fix for this. One where I wont lose everything on my desktop. My desktop didnt come with a windows cd or a recovery disc. So Im going to try using his to grab winlogon.exe from the disc using the recovery console and place it back where it belongs on my desktops hdd. Another option ive read about is using a liveCD by using bartPE or some other type. Ive spent all night reading about these options but im still confused as to the correct steps i should follow. I dont want to mess up and make things worse than they are. Any help regarding that would be helpful. thanks just thought about this: (I read that sometimes the recovery information is stored on the harddrive in cases where they dont give you a recovery CD. Would it be possible to go into I386 on my hdd if it exists and grab winlogon.exe from there and copy/move it without using a liveCD?)

"My desktop didnt come with a windows cd or a recovery disc". I wish I had a nickel every time I read that statement. You were supposed to make the restore disk when you first started to use the computer. "Prior to that I wasnt using any kind of firewall". Geez, now you need help.

haha, yea I'm terrible. I usually just tried to deal with stuff once I noticed that it was affecting my computer or if the signs were obvious. I was fine just getting rid of visible signs like popups or a bunch random new exes on my desktop/system folder. as for the cd, I really dont remember getting one. Ive searched everywhere and even found the recovery disc for this old laptop.

You probably DIDN'T get one. You needed to burn one yourself. Instructions on how came with the computer.

fixed it.