Hello Wayne-

 CA> I use AVG to scan for virus, ZoneAlarm to block unwanted access
 CA> and went to www.grc.com to use Steve Gibson's downloadable utilities
 CA> to block the ports used by vandals.

 WC> As do I per your recommendations.

Seems to keep out the troubles others have had in the past.

 WC> Still during a google search I hit a site which breached
 WC> security. I was looking for source for a shareware game to
 WC> test my reflexes after a recent incident and up came a site
 WC> promoting Warez :-(
 WC> Repeated attempts to close the browser failed as it kept
 WC> reopening :-( I killed the dialer to eliminate that threat
 WC> then deleted Win temp files.

I've reviewed information about that not too long ago but not sure
where right now.  Could've been Fred Langa's newsletter but may
also have been Axcel's Windows tweaks website?

 WC> No idea how this clown's code breached my system.

I've read how this is done but don't remember it. :-\

 WC> EBD gave no help at all and even LiLo got clobbered :-(
 WC> CMOS wouldn't detect the hard drive either.

 CA> Sounds like either a power supply problem or over heating to me.

 WC> It's been fine for days now.
 WC> Power saver is set to low power the system at 20 minutes,
 WC> same for monitor but leaves the hard drive spinning at all
 WC> times.

 CA> Power saver functions are for battery powered systems.  No reason
 CA> to use them on a desktop other than to power down the monitor and
 CA> that can be done by windows AFAIK.

 WC>  Well the heater only takes 14 watts.
 WC>  What the heck I conserve power.

I don't trust the machine to manage well in 'power saver' mode.

 WC>  I do have the monitor powered down in Win 98 but the
 WC>  system sleep mode is invoked in CMOS.
 WC>  Don't ask me why but any other combinations cause lockups
 WC>  and problems.

I can live without the 'help' of any automated "turner-offer". ;-)

 WC> But just before I gave up I entered the proper figures into
 WC> CMOS and booted with my LINUX rescue disk and lo and behold
 WC> Knoppix came right up with no problem whatsoever!

That CMOS was affected seems to point to some sort of power glitch
rather than software related (not a Windows glitch).

 CA> KNOPPIX is read/only. Hard to trash that. :-)

 WC>  Not on the drive entering as root it's not.
 WC>  Remember I mounted /hda1 to take a look at it
 WC>  and I also reran LiLo, neither are currently allowed as an
 WC> ordinary user.
 WC>  Or do you mean if the image file isn't loaded
 WC>  it's invulnerable? That would make sense.
 WC>  Really annoying that /hda1 looked fine checking it out
 WC>  from Linux but when I used the EBD everything went to hell
 WC>  in a heartbeat.

 CA> You can only trash the file system that is in-use when the glitch
 CA> happens.  I'm assuming that you weren't using Linux at that time.

 WC> Yeah but why was the C drive not recognized in any way
 WC> except through booting Linux and mounting it there where all
 WC> looked well? It is a puzzlement.

CMOS was trashed you said?  Windows uses CMOS, Linux does not.

 WC> Mounted /dev/hda1 /mnt and had a look around and
 WC> the files and directories on the 98 FAT 32 partition
 WC> looked fine.

 WC> After doing a shutdown -r now from console the system
 WC> came up on the Windows emergency rescue diskette
 WC> saying I should do a "scanreg."
 WC> I did and it cycled through until there wasn't a single
 WC> valid registry backup :-(
 WC> So I ran scandisk it that pretty much vaporized anything
 WC> that looked much like Windows 98.
 WC> Yeah I had the undo disks but that too failed.
 WC> Several THOUSAND files were corrupted
 WC> and I didn't even have a Windows directory.

 CA> Still sounds like over heating to me.

 WC> Could be, you've been right an awfully lot but why
 WC> was Linux on /hda3 and /hda4 unaffected?
 WC> Also the system never actually seems to get very hot
 WC> anywhere when I've had the case open poking around.

 CA> A marginal voltage from the power supply?  Could be the
 CA> refrigerator kicking in and temporarily dropping the
 CA> wattage to a marginal power supply?

 WC>  The computer is by design on a completely separate leg
 WC>  of my wiring and has a surge protector.
 WC>  AC, refridgerator and microwave are on different circuits.
 WC>  Load on this leg is at at MOST 400 watts with no inductive
 WC> components.

Electro-static shock at the wrong time in the wrong place?  I had
something like this from a loose power cord not shoved into the
back of the machine tightly.

--- Maximus/2 3.01