I was rebuilding a computer that was dying, and had put in an old hard drive to transfer over the information on it to my new computer. I was trying to delete the Windows directory and couldn't delete C:/Windows/system32/Macromed/flash9.ocx no matter what I did. Not with any uninstaller, not in Safe Mode-Access is always denied, File in use or write protected. I can't even format the disc. When I ran my first antivirus scan, the scan ran over 18 hours just on that one file!
So I made sure everything I needed was off of the drive, booted into Safe Mode and clicked on the Security tab. Under that tab were my user, Power User, Administrator, EVERYONE and an unknown user (S1-b3mpxfcert-45-mpqwx) or something like that. I could delete EVERYONE, but there was no way I could delete the Unknown User, nor could I change permissions. Everytime I tried, it just comes back with Full Control. So I pulled the drive.
I've recently been into the Registry permissions and didn't see any odd users there in any of the keys-but this has me spooked. I've ALWAYS used Antivirus and full firewalls with regular scans of the entire computer. The only reason I picked it up this time is because I changed companies when I rebuilt the system. (Got tired of Norton's Zombie processes loading things up). I have to admit, the system runs A LOT better without the drive on it, even though there was almost nothing on it. Before pulling the drive, I was frequently using up 100% of the CPU, with almost nothing open-even with stopping processes using the process explorer.
But I work on my computer, and if I've been botted, I need to notify my boss.
System is XP SP3 with a Dual Core processor and 2 GB Ram.
Kim
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