No programs open/start

[DoomTrout]

Well, in the interests of irony, the day I remember to buy the bloody disk I needed my internet decides to stop working almost entirely. In effect, when I turned my computer nack on and managed to open Chrome, no web pages will load at all. It'll show the dim loading ring in tje tab, but it never loads, it just stays with the loading ring for about an hour and then it times out. I've narrowed down some possibilities like my connection, my firewalls, virus or anything obvious. It's the same with IE too. Have to post this from my phone. The ironic thing is that now I can't download the memtest software. At this point I'm thinking my best bet is to just replace the blasted computer.

 

[Night Hawk]

I spent a few days trying to debug a Vista laptop recently hit with a fake antispyware program that apparently did the damage fast without notice even long after it was removed! Suddenly no connection on a solid connection despite looking over everything including disabling things like TCP protocols, Auto tuning, Offload, etc.

With frustration and already planning to boost the 1gb of memory along with a new larger drive a clean install following a clean install solved everything fast. It does suggest you may have been "bugged" by something on that idea rather then any hardware problem since you first mentioned a wipe from a trojan that may contaminated files you backed up before the drive was wiped. REINFECT! REINFECT!

Without knowing a file or two was bugged you may have fell into a snare of going to use a polluted file and reinfected everything much like an I-Worm operates. The trojan or downloader did more then first thought.

Too bad you didn't have another firewalled system where you could throw the drive into an external enclosure and run additional scans over it. With other sweeps you find more. Recently when running a sweep I came across a bugged file from an old XP system never opened in zip file form that contained a surprize.