Windows XP mysteriously locked-down - possible virus?

[Mercury]

Hi,

I booted up my XP Pro PC this morning and discovered something nasty has happened.

First I noticed that my LAN connection was disconnected. Rebooting my Linksys router hasn't helped - the LAN icon in my system tray looks like it's obtaining an IP address and then goes into a disconnected state. It now flits between the two continously.

Then I noticed that on my Start Menu, the Log Off/Shutdown option has vanished! No Run option either. When I right-click on my taskbar, the Task Manager option is unavailable (i.e. greyed out).

The worst bit is that when I try and browse my C drive from My Computer, it tells me I do not have permission to access this drive!

So, my PC is basically unusable at the present time. It seems to have been completely locked down. I don't have any anti-virus software currently installed.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to what trojan/virus might have caused this, or what to try in the way of fixing it before I am forced to start swapping disks around/re-installing my entire system?

 

[markysparky]

No Antivirus!!
Try booting into safemode with networking, then download a trial of kaspersky Antivirus and install and run it. If your pc lets you do this. Other options are doing a system restore to an earlier date or using your xp disc to do a repair. To be honest though it may just be easier to reinstall windows

 

[Mercury]

No Antivirus!!

I know!

I go through phases of using AV software but don't like the resource impact it can create. Having said that, the resource impact of the current situation is far worse so I'll be a sensible chappy from now on!

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll see what I can do this evening when I get home from work. My USB stick is already loaded with a number of trial AV packages.

 

[Rich]

Use Nod32 then. You wont even notice its there.