Something very wrong!?!?

From: Rick Sheehan (ricks@datacruz.com)
Date: 03/06/03 

From: "Rick Sheehan" <ricks@datacruz.com>
Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 09:05:53 -0800

I was enjoying a league race the other night in n2k3 and
when the race finished I was thrown to my desktop where
an unusual looking IE text window informed me that I was
broadcasting my IP address and if I would just click on
the 'okay' button I would be able to get help. Well I
clicked on the 'X' icon in the upper right to close the
window, not knowing where the message came from or would
take me, and to my surprise the system rebooted?
Strange? I immediately went to change my XP Network
Firewall settings, I think I had let them down for some
reason earlier in the week, and I could not even see the
Network settings. Went to Control Panel, clicked
on "Network Connections" and got a blank networking
screen. "Network Setup Wizard' does not run either. I
have tried doing everything I can think of and it always
comes out the same, nothing happens when you click on
it. Even tried to reload the Add new Network options
from the XP CD but it wouldn't load either. It seems the
network editing functions are not available, but the
Internet is there as is my local area network. I can get
on the internet and into other machines on the network.
I just can't get into or change any network settings.

Well I thought maybe I had a virus? Ran 'Housecall',
everything was okay! Loaded Norton AV 2003, applied all
updates, and it said everything was okay! Thought, well
maybe it needs an XP update. Went to MS Windows Update
and tried to run it. Looks like it was trying to
download a couple of critical updates but just stops when
the downloading measurement window comes up. System is
still running fine but the download never starts or
installs. Done this 20 or 30 times. My system seems to
run okay on everything else I have tried but?? Well I
figured now is the time for 'System Restore' so I ran
it. Seemed to run okay but didn't fix the problem.

Gone into 'Safe' mode and checked out all of my devices,
everything looks fine. Did find a Linksys NIC card
installed? Have never had a Linksys NIC in this machine,
runs an onboard Realtek. Removed the Linksys device.
Can't find anything unusual looking in 'dxdiag'
or 'msconfig'.

Okay, so I tried to reformat and reload! Booted from the
XP-Pro disk and tried a complete fresh reformat and
install. After running for a few minutes transferring
files etc, it kicks me to a blue error screen and tells
me I have a hardware related problem and can't continue
when it gets to the part where it would ask about
reformatting. Refers to new hardware that was
installed? The only new hardware is the AMD Athlon-XP
2800+ chip installed several days ago. Ran the
compatibility test and it came out clean. Tried booting
with a Win ME and a Win 98 boot disk but it won't let me
delete the primary DOS partition, some sort of
compatibility issue with NTFS. Guess I could trash the
Hard Drive, but that sounds kinda dumb and expensive.

Have changed video cards, memory and power supplies with
no changes in the behavior. I have also played with all
of the BIOS settings on the MB and deleted and reloaded
most all drivers for my other hardware without success.
Temperatures do not appear to be a problem. I'm thinking
someone has hacked my registry? Or is this something
someone out there can help me with?

System Specs: MB Gigabyte KT/400 GA-7VAXP; AMD Athlon-XP
2800+ Barton Core; ATI 9700-PRO (3.0, 3.1 cat's and
latest OmegaCorner drivers) tried Ti4600 also; 1 stick
512MB DDR400 tried DDR333 also; WD 7200rpm 80 Gig HD;
Creative Audigy 2 Platinum; Creative 6.1 speakers;
onboard Realtek NIC; Antec True Power 480w Power supply
tried 2 of them; US Robotics modem; Via 4.45; All of the
latest software, Windows updates except last two Critical
ones, video and BIOS updates. Creative CD-RW CD and
Creative CD-DVD Player; 4 case fans and replaced the chip
fan on the video card with a TL Orb. Network connection
is via AT&T Cable 1.5Gig/384K, 5pk IP Address option
through a Linksys Cable/DSL Router.