Major problem with my PC, things go missing?

[Tophinator]

Recently I have been having some major troubles with my comp. Its the one is my sig. For one when I try to open Microsoft word it tries to install it. The program isnt missing I can go into Program Files and its right there. Also windows media player has been deleted from my program list but also can be found in my Program files but it wont let me make a short cut for it. And now it asks me to select a user when the computer boots but I never adjusted the settings for that. The list goes on. And I have my passwords saved on my comp for websites and it doesnt seem to be remembering those either. Also my system has become very laggy. From anything from games to just openeing up the start menu seems to be a lot slower than it used to. The only programs I have downloaded lately were Motherboard monitor 5 and a battlefield vietnam demo which I have already uninstalled. I have run vigorous scans with AVG 6.0, Adware 6.0, and Spyware S&D. They all say my system is clean. With AIM and this website open im only using 160MB of memory and I dont see any services running that shouldn't be. Im not new to computers either but this has got me stumped and is making me want to do a clean sweep which I really want to avoid. I really need some help with getting my comp back.

[Tophinator]

And also all my scanning AV programs are fully updated.

[compusport]

With symtoms like that, I'd really be leaning towards a clean sweep. But that's just me. The only thing I can suggest is posting a Hijack This log and see if anyone spots something. Wish you luck

[Tophinator]

Well I would really hate to have to sweep everything because I would ahve to back up all my files onto like 12 discs. Is there a way that I can just uninstall and then reinstall my operating system(XP)?

[compusport]

try posting the Hijack this log first. Anything is preferable to a reinstall. All the info you need for posting a log is in this thread:

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=103171

[Tophinator]

Ok thanks. Ill give it a shot tomarow when I come home form classes.

[Hi Ho]

How long ago did this start happening? Did you try a system restore? That has saved me many times. There is also the option to do a repair install of XP instead of a clean sweep.

[Panama Red]

Your sig says your vid card is oc'd, how bout the cpu? Are you oc'ing the system? Besides the Hijact This! log, I'd lower any oc you've established and see if that may be contributing to the problem.

[Tophinator]

This started happening about a week ago. And yes my graphics card and CPU are both overclocked. I have adjusted them both back to there stock settings and nothing changes except things run minutly slower(except for in games). But I reinstalled microsoft word and made a shortcut in my program list for windows. Then I went through my comp and cleaned up a lot of worthless files and freed up some space. It helped a little but didnt make large improvement.

[glc]

Ad-Aware 6.0 is now obsolete - uninstall it and install Ad-Aware SE. Same applies to Spybot S&D 1.2 - you need 1.3.

[Tophinator]

really? I still see people recomend ad-aware 6.0 but were can i download the SE version.

[compusport]

just type Ad-Aware SE into google. It will take you straight to the site

[rjfvillarosa]

I had adaware SE on my machine and I was prompted to download the new adaware personal 1.05 which i have done and I am major pleased with it.
BUT none of the antivirus or adaware programs detected a .exe called "webrebates". I had a customers machine showing all the symptoms you describe and after pulling my hair out for a day or two I stumbled across webrebates on the machine, it took me a while to clean it because webrebates is launched by another .exe that I can't remember the name of.
I did a search for webrebates and I deleted everything I could find, but it relaunched after rebooting the machine. I booted the machine into safe mode and did another search and found some ambiguos files (.exe) that I then deleted. Slowly after running Norton windoctor and Easycleaner the machine came back to normal. I have now come across this webrebates a couple of times, but it always seems to be associated with South American or Latin American websites.
I live in Puerto Rico and most of my customers are obviously latin's so maybe thats why I see such a proliferation of this problem associated with those sites, but I still haven't seen it come up anywhere else.

[Tophinator]

well i installed Ad-Aware SE and it found 37 infected files So after those were deleted I gained much of my performance back. I also reinstalled MS office and went thru everything and deleted everything I didnt need except MSN Gaming Zone which I couldnt remove and will have to later. Thanks for the help.