I think my windows 98 IBM APTIVA has a "zombie". If not is some other kind of virus. This used to be my only computer and I have had problems with it proccessing in the middle of the night or when it had been left idle for more than a few hours - not consistant. Usualy I would find that the computer would freeze after I would start to use it again, reboot and things would return to normal. Over the years I have replaced the hard drive ( from a bigfoot 6GB to a Maxtor 32GB) and the probem quieted down
but never fully went away. I got crazy over this past summer and I decided to restore windows and erase all the junk. So I saved all the files I wanted and burned them to a CD. After reinstalling windows the computer refused to install the CD ROM drive ( the driver is on the recovery CD and I have never had a probem with the CD ROM before). After scouting local repair shops we decided it would be cheaper to buy a refurb computer. So we took the Maxtor hard drive and installed it as a secondary drive in the refurb Windows 2000 NT and reformated it. I have not had a problem with the refurb computer. We put the Bigfoot back into the APTIVA and it booted right up and the CD ROM worked after I reinstalled windows from the CD. Now it's baaaaaack to proccessing all the time again. I still have dial up account and when I tryed to connect to the internet with the APTIVA it is so bogged down it won't even load a website ( like a home page). AVG came with the refurb WIN 2000 NT so I burned the files to a CD and intalled it on the APTIVA and it found nothing ( granted I can't connect the APTIVA to the internet and update it). Same story with Ghost Surf ( spyware) and Spybot S&D. Im working on a way to get the updated files on to the APTIVA. It seams that every time I get close to finding the infected files something else will go wrong. One week it was the printer driver that was forgotten, now it's the display and it looks as if it's running in safe mode ( but it's not). So my first concern is how do I get rid of the bug on the APTIVA? After it's cleaned I plan to never take the APTIVA online again. My second concern is if the virus, bug, zombe whatever could still be on the Maxtor drive and infect my newer WIN 2000 NT computer.
Currently I have and use on both systems: Firefox and Thunderbird, Ghost Surf 2005, Sygate Personel Firewall PRO, Spybot Search and Destroy, AVG Free Edition.
Today I booted the APTIVA into DOS and ran Scandisk. It made a few repairs but it did not fix the problem.
Thanks in advance for your help.
