Hi, Please accept my apologies if I have not explained anything clearly enough but i am a little old on new lingo!!!

I am running XP from home and last night the following happened.

After being logged on for pretty much the full day, I had what seemed like a pop up come up. Although most pop ups are blocked sometimes a stray one gets through. I closed it and the next thing my screen went black and then showed me my wallpaper. After that nothing. I rebooted and it logged me on. I then was presented with all my icons, start menu etc and then about 10 seconds from it logging me on the same happened. All my icons, start menu etc disappeared. The only thing I noticed was that after i disconnected my internet it came up with the 'wireless connections available' box but this did not appear at the bottom of my screen as usual, it appeared at the top. I am able to alt, ctrl, delete but that is about it. I have tried booting with the XP disk and also in safe mode but I cannot access anything.

I am unable to run any kind of virus search as the icons will not stay there long enough.

I am unable to log on as the administrator either as the password which I thought it was is not working!

We are mostly UNIX people here. But.

Do you know how to do a 'safe mode boot' by holding down the F8 key during boot up?
This disables all kinds of peripheral software, drivers, etc. What you get is a screen that looks like old Windows 3.1.

You may be able to run a virus check from there. Otherwise, you will have to remove the master drive, turn it into a slave so it cannot boot, and then hook it up to another box with a virus checker. This is assuming you don't have a hardware issue.

You will also want to run some anti-spyware software against it once you clear it of viruses. This type of software generally works only when the disk is re-enabled as the boot disk.

I seem to recall having the option to do a step-thru or step-by-step execution while re-booting. Would suggest you try this and keep good notes on what executes and what executes "immediately before problems starting".
Word of caution on this: leave plenty of time between steps. A program might start, but that does not mean that its execution has reached the potential problem area. (For instance, your opening this thread means it has been read, but not that you have rad this far yet!)

Hi Guys,

I would like to thank you for all your help. I tried everything you asked but unfortunantly nothing worked so i decided to beg an IT guy at work! He did maanage to inform me that my laptop held a docking station (yes i know i should have known this) and maybe it was sending my desktop to what it thought was another screen. Anyway once the docking station was removed (professionally of course!!!) we were able to run the AV which sowed a trojen virus. Although i have not mamanged to remove the virus completly i have been able to use the laptop. It seems that each time i log on and run virus scan it manages to lower the defence of the virus! Not sure if that make sense to you all but that is what is happening. Once again i would like to thank you all for your kind help. You have been brilliant!!