From: Chris 

Another good suggestion.  I *think* I turned off the automatic reboots (75%
sure) but I'll double check that, too, when I get home, after I restore the
backup.

Also, any ideas for other spyware-detection/removal programs out there
besides Ad-Aware and Spybot?

Keep the ideas coming!

/Chris


Frank Haber wrote:
> You can throw rotten fruit, and pardon me for asking, but you're *absolutely*
> sure there's no spyware lurking?  You have turned off "reboot on
bluescreen,"
> yes, and looked up any stopcodes?
>
> Just to encourage you (not), and to show you how tetchy computers can be in
> the API area, let me tell you a story of some Win98 Sony desktops.  At one
> point I supported a lot of them.  They cam with 98-original.  An app needed
> 98SE.  98SE was notorious for shutdown problems on many machines, and I
> produced a doozy.  The machines would reboot when shutdown, and became
totally
> incapable of either a warm boot or a "reboot the GUI only"
cycle.  You also
> couldn't go to the "gaming" DOSbox, and any attempt to fiddle with
WINBOOT.INI
> produced an instant hard hang.  There were two Microsoft patches for this.
> Neither worked.  There were many drastic registry patches.  I settled on
> forcing ACPI (the hardware was there, but the enumeration/PCI ID was broken,
> and Sony, the b*stards, rarely does BIOS updates).  That worked about half
the
> time, and the symptoms varied machine-machine.  On most of them, when
shutdown
> failed, you hung at a flashing text cursor (BEYOND the "now it's
safe to shut
> down" screen).  CHKDSK *didn't* run on the next boot.  All was well except
for
> the 2% of the time when CHKDSK did run.  I got called on every one of these.
>
> Well, most of the machines were retired and the SIMMS stolen for use
elsewhere
> (printers).  I recently had occasion to fire up a couple for a legacy shoot.
> I discovered something.  Running the machines with *two* sticks of memory,
> rather than the factory 128 on one SIMM, fixed the shutdown problems 99%.
Bus
> termination?  My deodorant?  Go figure.
>
> Yes, I exonerate Microsoft on this one.  Yes, it's a hardware problem.  But I
> also say, "Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we abandon
the good old
> reliable Big Orange Switch."  That doesn't rhyme.  Sue me.
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5