Master Blaster

Question: I brought a brand new computer about three months ago. It has Windows XP and Internet Explorer. The problem is that my computer runs slower, and when I am on the net for about twenty minutes, I get a blue screen and it says that “NT administrator will shut down the computer in one minute”. I made a backup of all of my files, and erased a lot of files to see if it would still happen. It did. I even reformatted my hard drive and reinstalled Windows XP, put a few files from the backup on, and it still happened. I have an older computer that has Windows 98 and is networked to the new one, but it doesn’t have this problem.
Terry G.
Answer: It sounds like to me that your new computer may have come down with a virus. I say this for two reasons. The first is because the problem continued after you had reformatted your hard drive. The second reason is that the other networked computer was not affected.
From what you have told me, it would appear that you reinstalled your problem onto your computer. This is of course assuming several things. One is that you used the backup that you created to restore your system. Once you reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled the operating system, then your computer should have reverted to default settings. It would be when you restored the files from the back up that your problems could restart.
More recent viruses are felt more on newer versions of Windows. Computers infected by variants of Msblast, W32 Blaster or LovSan, have the characteristics as you are describing. If you have had a T.V. on I’m sure that you have heard of the latest viruses du jour. In all actually, it is more of a worm than a virus, but either way the remedy is rather painless.
Microsoft offers a patch to prevent the blaster worm. The Blaster worm is an exploit of a Windows shortcoming. If you have Windows XP, then every time that you start your computer you see a little message in the lower right of the screen by the clock. It generally says something to the effect that there are new programs for download. These programs are usually patches to problems that Microsoft has found. This should be the second thing that you do. The first thing that needs to be done is to perform a search of all files on your computer. The file that you will be looking for is called Msblast.exe. If you find it then sanitize it. If you don’t have a file sanitizer or file deletion program, send it to the recycle bin and empty the bin. For the truly paranoid, you can install a personal firewall first then proceed with the other steps. If you don’t have a personal firewall or virus scanner then I hope this encourages you to get one. I hope that this solves your problem. As always, email me with your questions.