Too bad one couldn't make a contribution...
to science on that one; but of course the client comes first, and they rarely have time for such things. I just completed a possible fix on another vexing situation, where it was suspected that the virus re-installation files were hiding in sectors marked for damage on the hard drive. I ran Western Digital's diagnostic tool to re-check for actual damage and stomp those areas with zero fills. This - has worked for me before on a newer SATA drive, only it was Seagate and I used SeaTools to do the same thing. Then I low level formatted the entire drive. All diagnostics including S.M.A.R.T. then reported the drive healthy, and the drive geometry was fixed. So now that PC has run for two years now with no problems; despite impending disaster reported by all diagnostic tools before hand!
I suspect a lot of perfectly good drives are being thrown away, when it is simply very buggered virus activity that is fouling up the works. However - this last problem was an XP Home operating system, and I discovered the client forgot to password protect the hidden administrator. I sometime disable the account after giving it an impossible to crack password, which I record in their files. I believe I had to disable the hidden Administrator through the CMD line. The instructions for Windows Home installations are online somewhere. I always do this for clients that don't have a professional Windows OS installations. Maybe that is one reason they have so little trouble after I consult with them. It is very easy to maintain control of a persons PC through that account, and one won't even notice the symptoms of the take over, until it is too late.
