hourglass comes up when mouse moved over taskbar on startup

[johnsongary22]

When I boot my windows xp computer, the curser changes to the hourglass when moved over the taskbar on startup. The entire computer is essentially locked, nothing I click will open except if I click the Start Menu, it will open slowly, but cannot click anything past that. Ctrl Alt Del doesnt work whatsoever. I have System Restored to a previous backup, still the same problem. I have read about the SSID in My Computer, unfortunately nothing on my system will open up. Any help you could give me would really be great. Thanks

[jason2074]

Try booting to safemode. When you press the POWER button, press F8 repeatedly. If unable to boot to safemode, reboot and do it again till you are given these options.

[johnsongary22]

Thanks for your response!

I forgot to mention that I have booted in Safe Mode and ran antivirus and malware scanners and cleaned up the startup programs. However, outside of Safe Mode, the hourglass idling over the taskbar with no functionality still continues

Any advice?

[jason2074]

I forgot to mention that I have booted in Safe Mode and ran antivirus and malware scanners and cleaned up the startup programs.

Which means you can and have run on safemode properly without the hour-glass issue...? Have you check device manager for any driver updates/issue and can you open Task manager(under safemode)and see any CPU usage, processes? What's your current antivirus, firewall? What do you mean clean the start-up programs?

[jason2074]

I have read about the SSID in My Computer, unfortunately nothing on my system will open up.

If you were able to run safemode and boot to desktop w/out hour-glass/freezing, then go back to this issue.  Try referring to : http://support.microsoft.com/kb/841571

[Allan]

What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

[johnsongary22]

@ Allan: Nothing on my system is new since the last time it worked property. No new hw, sw, virus, or errors. This just started happening out of the blue.

@ jason2074: I disabled SSID in safe mode. Rebooted and it did not fix the issue.

What is the best way to check the device manager for updates and issues?

I opened task manager, here are the processes listed, all with 00 under CPU except for System Idle Process SYSTEM which has 99 CPU.

taskmgr.exe
explorer.exe
svchost.exe
aawservice.exe
svchost.exe
evchost.exe
lsass.exe
services.exe
winlogon.exe
csrss.exe
smss.exe
system
system idle process SYSTEM (CPU 99)

Under Performance, my CPU usage moves between 0% and 2%

The current antivirus is AVG. I ran a AVG scan, AdAware scan, and CCleaner scan, cleaned the registry, and removed unncecessary programs from loading at startup.

Any other suggestions?

[patio]

Clik Here...

evchost seems to be a rootkit infection...follow the instructions for Posting your logs and someone will be along shortly...

[johnsongary22]

I was going through the steps listed at http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php/topic,46313.0.html

I got to step 5 to update my JAVA and it detected that my machine was running an old version of JAVA, however when trying to update and install the updated version, I get prompted with a dialog box that says "The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation".

The same thing comes up when trying to install HijackThis.

I know that I am logged in as Administrator so I am unsure how to get around this issue.

[patio]

Right clik the Java installer and select "Run as admin"...
Do the same for Hijack This...

[johnsongary22]

Thanks everyone for your help so far.....

I tried to install JAVA as administrator and it says it cannot be installed in Safe Mode

I right clicked HijackThis and it did not give me an option to Run As...

Any other suggestions?

[patio]

Try in normal mode...
Some infections will block protection apps from updating/installing...

[johnsongary22]

Unfortunately I cannot access or perform anything in normal mode. The only way i can get the computer to function is in safe mode. See previous posts for details on issues.

Any other suggestions?

[jason2074]

You mention in your previous post that you have cleaned up start-up programs. Does this mean disabled all or certain services under STARTUP OR SERVICES MENU?

[johnsongary22]

This means that i have disabled some services that have been loading at startup.

The remaining services that are still loading at startup are:

ZCfgSvc
ifrmewrk
Apoint
AGRSMMSG
avgtray
TPSMain
regsvr32 /smqrt
QTTask
iTunesHelper
oaui
mbam
toscdspd
ctfmon