[Ham-Computers] not convinced this is a virus...final

[refmon]

Hi,

I wanted to thank everyone on the list overall;  the knowlege base is =
quite impressive.  Those of you who responded actually each contributed =
a piece to the end solution.  The main tricks I learned here were:

1)  in msdos.sys, set autoscan to zero, which stops the incesseant =
scandisk interruptions, allowing freedom to deal with the underlying =
problem.  General advice was that this shut-off be temporary and set =
back to 1 once the problems are cleared.  Use Norton utilities et al as =
accessories rather than replacements.

2)  Download and hold on dearly to "regclean"...run regclean, fix =
problems, reboot, run regclean, fix problems, etc until regclean =
announces no problems found.  My registries were cleaned up rather =
quickly, but I was impressed that the "weed-out" files were on the order =
of 42K, then 1K, then cleaned at zero-K.  The PC's boot incredibly =
faster and are, of all things, far more stable right from the start.  I =
think there may be a few general config issues that I will keep as my =
personal problems and deal with with what I've learned from you all.

As an aside, this did not happen to me, but there is a warning that =
regclean may inadvertantly stop good-guy operations, so be sure to save =
the weed-out file.  You can undo by double clicking the weedout file.

3)  Norton 2002 Utilities Disk Doctor and registry optimizer seemed to =
help a lot...but only as accessories.  For some reason my scandisk was =
jammed on, but never actually fixed anything.  Once scandisk was turned =
off, NDD was able to fix several species of problems with FAT, Directory =
entries, and corrupt files.  But scandisk was still jammed on.  Only =
after the full-Monty regclean job did scandisk begin to work properly.=20

So, while I don't know precisely what the problem was, I have learned to =
fix this set of symptoms.

One interesting tip that did not seem to be the issue in this case, but =
certainly is worth knowing:  While dealers and manuafacturers say the =
133 MHz memory modules will auto-sense a 100MHz buss (and that certainly =
seems true in my case), there may be intermittent BSOD and/or lockups, =
etc you are experiencing.  In some cases, word has it that putting real =
100MHz memory on a 100MHz buss eliminates the problem.  I tried this but =
it did not help in this case.  In any case, I have bought the 133 MHz =
memory with an eye toward eventual board and CPU upgrades, but of course =
one must ensure the interim arrangement actually works.

Again, thanks to all.

John Collins
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