Hello,
My home PC has been put out of action by a virus/worm of some kind, which I have so far not been able to identify. Any advice would be much appreciated!
On Saturday night (after my wife and kids were online all afternoon) the PC would automatically shut down into standby after about a minute, just after reaching the windows login screen. It also appears that Windows password entry is corrupted. Entering one keystroke adds a varying number of dots in the password box – anywhere from zero to 6, but it is then impossible to delete any with backspace. Several attempts to start in safe mode have all failed. I suspect the problem was caused by a mail/script that “automatically clicked” a link to a malicious website.
The OS is WinXP home edition SP2 running AVG anti-virus (last automatic update downloaded on Saturday around midday). Apparently there was no warning that the PC was going to shut down, as would be typical of sasser etc. I have unplugged the network cable and there doesn’t seem to be any mysterious hard-disk access.