For the past few months, ever since I ran into a powerful trojan my computer has been acting funny. I managed to manually remove the trojan files that remained after Spybot picked out the main file but for some reason there still must be something 'looming' on my computer. I don't run antivirus and the only firewall I use is Windows Firewall. The programs I use to keep me running smooth are Ad-Aware, Spybot: S&D, Spyware Blaster, and Tune-Up Utilities. My computer can run fine for a week straight, maybe 2 weeks at best without a problem. For some reason "before it will hit", my PC will automatically seem to have a bunch of memory taken up because my HD activity lights are constantly on (not flashing) and I can still operate windows but it is slow to load a window, but then randomly, Windows will freeze and I have to do a reboot. Then, when I reboot, if I am lucky enough, it will make it to the blue login screen, but normally it will either sit on the main Windows load screen with the progress bar just loading for 5-10 mins and then freeze, or it will continue, go to a black screen, and freeze.

Okay so that is my problem. Now to begin fixing it. I reboot, go into the advanced options screen to try and boot into safe mode. If I choose Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking, it will go down the list of the Windows drivers it activates but then boom, it will freeze on that list. I then shut off my computer fully for 30 seconds and then restart it, try booting in Safe Mode again, and sometimes it will work and sometimes it won't. I noticed that Safe Mode with Networking has worked the best and just about boots fully to desktop everytime. I can then open up System Restore and pick a date to restore back to. That then closes Windows normally, does its backup, restarts, and loads Windows without a problem. I have been doing this for the past 2-3 months now and getting tired of it.

Over time, it has gotten easier to load Windows into safe mode and do the restore but back when I got hit with the trojan, it was terrible to get into Windows. The trojan got in and changed my MBR, added things to my registry, and many other temporary files that would load up after next reboot as Processes. I ended up reading of a way to fix the problem with the MBR by just putting in the XP disk and going into the Recovery Console and using the 'fixmbr' function. That fixed that, I then could get into Windows and began my cleaning of what changes have been made by the trojan and from my knowledge, cleaned up pretty well. I can run full scans on both Spybot and Ad-aware and nothing suspicious or crucial comes up in the scan result.

I am running Windows XP SP3 32bit.

My top 3 conclusions are a hard drive going bad, a processor going bad, or a ram stick(s) going bad. But since I can recover Windows and it will work fine for a week, that tells me it can't be hardware related.

Any ideas?

Sounds to me you have already spent spent the time it would take to do a reformat and fresh install of Windows many times over. Get yourself a new hard drive if you don't already have a second drive with room, backup all your data, and start fresh. These days you can get a terabyte for under $100, and it's so much easier to start fresh than to continually deal with a nasty bug. My $.02...

Definitely sounds software/Windows related to me, and not a problem with your hardware. Could it be when you run a System Restore, it restores the malware or trojan again (in a hibernating state)? My guess is that the restore point(s) you've been using are already infected with the problem(s) on your computer and you end up putting part(s) of them back.

Continue trying to start from a clean slate, either by purging the current state of your computer (not using System Restore) or through a reinstall of your OS. Be careful of any suggestions involving the Recovery Console unless you're prepared to reformat. Often people suggest things incorrectly online and you can end up being forced to reformat whether you like it or not, even if the fix was simple to begin with. Backup your data on a separate drive and scan it for viruses/malware etc. from a different computer just in case.

Have you tried HijackThis yet?

I think I fixed it. It hasn't locked up yet but I can say my Windows is running much quicker for some reason, and not just from the overclocking! I don't know why but apparently the guy who put my computer together for me didn't use the SATA cables that came with my motherboard. I noticed the ones he put in were copper connections and the ones I just switched have silver? I don't know, but I sure have noticed a faster change!

Nevermind, kinda. I unplugged my D: drive and now just running my C: with Windows. It's faster and smoother but in the Windows Setup window when going to reformat says my install is damaged or corrupt but so far seems to run better than with my data HD connected.

Anybody got an idea on how to "clean" my D: without clearing the 200GB of data on it? It is formatted as NTFS so I was thinking I could possibly disconnect my C:, connect the D:, then use the XP disk to go into the Recovery console and use the 'fixboot' command, seeing as it doesn't have Windows on it but should refresh the filesystem of it?

I have just about everything backed up onto my data drive so I can reformat anytime but I take the risk of not having anymore XP activations with one of my disks (I've used at least 2, recorded). Or, if I reformat, the problem could come back as soon as I reconnect my D:...