no sign of anything in the log so I would assume a hardware problem possibly overheating or dodgy memory

 

thanks for the quick post,

i'm not sure sure it's a hardware prob, as my athlon is running around 54 C and i'm not overclocking either it or my graphics card. the memory is both a 512 and a 256, and both chips are 333 running at 266.
then there's the fact that norton is telling me every few seconds when i reboot that there is a remote access occurring. plus, i noticed that my bios does not allow me to set a password anymore...
hmmm???

 

quinner,

I am not enough of an expert to know if there are any trojans that can escape detection by a HJT scan.

However, since you are getting NAV messages about remote access, have you tried any anti trojan programs? The wilders.org site lists some of the available programs that have trial periods.

You could also look at Trojan Remover from www.simplysup.com This is not a real-time scanner, it just searches the usual starting points for trojans or the whole HDD if you let it. It will amend files if it finds anything so you need to read all the information carefully before trying it. It's free for 30 days.

 

Then again, reboots seem to be one of the symptoms of the W32 Blaster worm and XP is one of the OS's that are susceptible so perhaps you should investigate that possibility as well.

Symantec provide a removal tool http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.removal.tool.html

Assuming, of course, that this worm can evade a HJT scan.

Addendum

This thread would appear to cast some doubt on my latest theory;
http://forums.techguy.org/t154874/s.html Did I mention that I wasn't an expert?