Programs close/can't delete/acting weird

[AlmostAGeek]

PIII Celeron 900Mgz - 384mb ram - WinXP Pro - 40Gb hard drive

All was well when I gave this machine to my daughter. Brand new installation of everything, including a format to the hard drive. Everything working well. One month later it is back on my workbench. Here's what happening...

At boot up I get a message "The system has recovered from a serious error." Clicking don't send will bring up the desktop. The error report that it references doesn't exist on the machine.?.

Any right click to the desktop or any icon or menu item will bring the pull down menu, click delete (or anything else for that matter) and the desktop goes blank, except for the wallpaper, for a few seconds and presto, all icons are back put the process did work.

A double click to a few (not all) program icons will show an hourglass then nothing. No program start. Some work, some don't.

When some programs do load you will be in the middle of something and they will close with no notice. Some will load and then disappear.

I have run Spybot, Adware, can't run Norton (it won't come up), hijackthis, it has Spyware Guard and Spyware Blaster.

I'm stumped as to how to approach this. Any suggestions would be extremely appreciated.

 

[turtile]

I would just do a clean install of the OS. You might have a virus.

 

[Trotter]

Sounds like one. If you can get it online, try www.housecall.trendmicro.com.

A format and reinstall should work. Are you running a firewall on it? Does your daughter know what to do when it tells her that it has detected a virus? Mine would just keep clicking it to make it go away.