Is this a VIRUS or just a corrupted registry?

[mbasimon]

When I log on to my XP Pro machine, the machine restarts whenever I use a certain userid (the one I normally use). However, if I use any of the other accounts that I've set up, I can log in just fine. I've been have some trouble with this machine, and was about to wipe it clean anyway, but just wondering if anyone has encountered anything like this before? That main account that I use has admin rights.

Thanks.

 

[diogenes10]

You could try running a hijackthis log and see if there are any odd looking processes running out of the "troubled" users' application and/or temp folders.

-------------------------------------
It's 10 O'Clock ( somewhere! ).
Are your registry and data backed up?

 

[jlockley]

Yes, I have. If you had a couple of days to check it out, you might find that your permissions are messed up. This happened to me after an unsuccessful MS update. If I remember correctly, a dll or two were corrupted as well.

The problem could not be fixed completely, so we just wiped and went to a larger drive. Annoying, but if you are about to do that anyway, no serious problem.

 

[bfralia]

In my company we've seen several XP Pro profiles get mysteriously messed up. There's nothing obvious that we can see. The answer has been to log in as administrator, and rename the user profile in question.

Have the user log back in and that recreates the profile. Move the user's documents n' such into their new profile.

That's fixed it so far.