XP sp2 is now mistaken for a win95 OS

My XP SP2 is being identified as a WIN95 OS by every 70% of all downloads I try to install.I have not read every line of every post to see if anyone else has experienced this with ID BLASTER changing enough of the internals to now have downloads (some even from MS will say they will not funtion with my WIN95 OS.....but I am XP sp2!). This started after I ran ID BLASTER. So I had to lose many definition updates because they would not mesh anymore with the programs(I am supposing this was because of number ID changes made by ID BLASTER). I began getting malware because of the lack of updating.This blurs the problem. I tried re-intalling some of my anti-spyware,but some said go ahead and overwrite without uninstalling previous ware, others said to uninstall the old before installing the newer version. Differed from company to company. Then it came time to download SP2. It was saying I had the wrong system (OS) to install it when tried manually from MS site,and auto-update ignored my PC. So I ordered the CD version of SP2,thinking maybe it was because of my OEM install of XP by Gateway was misread by MS and CD would be more robust way to install. Well while waiting for the CD to arrive,lack of functioning updaters for anti-virus I ran, and anti spyware/anti malware were not functioning correctly .....if at all. I got a virus,and much malware. Using MS highest settings for security and running in safemode, I was able to get the SP2 to download into my machine. But now I had only the new MS firewall and three anti-virus programs (I know,I know...they are not compatable....but since only 10% of each were fuctional at all,they seemed to all work together along with some tech help from MS to get my pc to run NOT HAVING TO BE STUCK ANYMORE IN SAFEMODE JUST TO BOOT-UP AND GO ONLINE! Since then I have worked with tech support from all three anti-virus companys to get out their corrupted remnants so I could install just one anti-virus,one good firewall(some will work WITH MS firewall,most won't....at some point they collide if they work together for a while,problem come later) and find two anti-spyware,and anti-malware programs that are known to work together without conflicts. But this so far has got me 70%(will id me as a WIN95 and NOT INSTALL) of all anti-virus(and that leaves me with the bottom of the barrel choices(THE 30%THAT WILL DOWNLOAD....BUT FOR USE WITH WIN95!) with minimal updates,or no updates what-so-ever; and the same for the anti-spy-malware downloads........all will download to a point, then at the end when I try to run, or it get's to the end of the install THEN...BOOM...I am hit with the warning that I am running WIN 95 and it is now not going to run with that OS. I have a video production operation with a lot of software and hardware that is now useless. $10,000 into this system. Re-installing every CD takes several days to get all of them configured,in fact it takes me weeks to reset custom settings. I just did this 3 times, and been down half the year (of film production). I know I wwent into this without knowing dot net binary commands or knowing how to tweak my registry or remove thing, I always relied upon software to do it automatically((yes, I know, there is no substitute for actual knowlege[as opposed to virtual] )) Anyone got the answers to what I do with this altered state,altered ID that makes me appear as a WIN95 Thank you for considering my post and my lack of tech know-how.

 

Sounds like u may have a hi-jacker aboard try running your task manager check the processes runnin and see how much CPU,s its using if its more than the average say 10%,,check to see what apps may be running ,also check your IP connection to the server you run off.make sure its not someone elses.if everything looks good then i would reformat my xp then install the SP@ after or get a cd with the service pack 2 installed with the windows operating system ..sounds like a spyware infectiomn like maybe a lop installed into ur registry try a ttrial verision of Spy Annihaltor it will find the spyware in your reg but unless you buy it ..it will just tell you what regs they r attached in ..good luck/...

 

Yes FusionMaster, thank you for reminding me of that important aspect. My question was getting too long, so I left some things out. You are totally right(but so was I, as I explained I was getting these[infiltrations] as I waited for SUPPORT from M.S., Norton Symantec2003 "reloaded" (that had turned into the [BloodHound.Packed]virus....which they vigorously denied is exclusive to their product!LOL...Bloodhound is one of their "virus sniffer" folders which took them 6 months to admit). My point is my task manager keeps becoming corrupted,and tries to hide the fact it maxs out the CPU'S.I kill any unneeded apps that rise suspiciously,but idle & ie explorer I am afraid to touch. It helped me track down corrupted files,but it is like a cat and mouse game.I got SPYWAREBLASTER finally to update,and it took out many coolweb's and lop's.But everyday the pc is altered as to how I can get to the port settings that are changed.So updaters for SWB and MS get lost.Same with the "free"security suite"pushed by MS...CA Assoc. EZArmor also treats me as win95. Only the anti-virus part of trilogy will download,and DAILY i fight the ??for control of it's updater. Must reconfig the ports daily,if the app is even working that day to do so. For some time,task man was freezing on me too...it's like the ?? knows my next step,or is watching my next move like a chess game. I've watched it follow me with task man to the next logical place to head it off, and unknown apps sometimes appear for a minute or so,long enough for me to see what it is at Google,but when I come back to kill it or delete it,it's gone as if it knows I gonna do it! Really it is more like someone has found a way to cloak their log-on to my PC. In fact I have found logs months ago before I shut down all guest log-on openings,and still one actually caught and saw a "unknown user" was logged on as I watched the CPU'S go to 95-100,spiking at will. Even then it would stay fluttering at 1%-30% for no reason even after chasing "unknown user" out as if he had some other way to control or drain power. 5or 6 DSO exploits keep coming back right after a "cleaning". S&D I read in their newsgroup threads that up to 95% of the threads were saying the new ver. is buggy when used w/XP. Sluggishness to B.S.O.D. were all being reported in S&D's own site newsgroup (from XP users only). Many B.S.O.D. too. I was using it alongside SWB and WinPatrol. S&D keep freezing on coolweb(of which there are over 100 including many XXXtoolbar versions and two active-X downloaders that really burrow into registry w/molybolts &superglue). Funny.. my mouse cursor just ran away from me when I typed that!! Another thing that shows WHO'S IN CONTROL. BTW tried several free scanners,all showed from 0 to 3,5 to 6(same DSO exploits appear even after a cleansweep,and reg cleaners that show 450 missing links to dll's,threads to shortcuts,and unknown extentions to open everyday apps....how would they get an unknown extention??Is this what ID Blaster does? ID Blaster sounded like a really good idea that should have been a standard in XP long ago,but since it seems we all kind of became Beta-Testers on this one, I hope this great security idea get's some more attention. Not just so I(or we) can get things ship shape after a scrambled egg shotgun attempt at implimenting it, but so we can tell the difference between what spyware,viruses, and experimental code writing that has no live support......and I am not complaining(well not as much as I have to M.S. or Norton Symantec) ,because we all knew this is freeware, and we all come into this as a communal type body of users,all trying to help one another. I love Javacool's efforts,they deserve top billing for many apps, but as usual the good guys get underated by a fake (like at c-net) ratings proven by more than one person to be employees of the product they are falsely boosting in a thread. Javacool is much better quality that many many pay to fix,pay to look,pay to touch software. But for real my friends, I am now broke,been hit by hit and run auto driver from behind while on my bike,and spent all my $$ trying to sort this problematic software problem. BTW,I just saw that EZArmor AV(minus their firewall and spyware that comes in the suite)just removed the [Win32.Wintrim.Al]from my PC. Just today! But low and behold,now I saw that SP2 has also been removed,as was several of the SP1 patchs that were pre-SP2 and had still been needed by my particular system. When I went to put the SP2 disk in,it gave me an error message that it was "not meant to run on this OS"!!! Even my OEM CD of XP SP1 HOME DOES NOTHING TO RE-LOAD IT. CAN THE VIRUS CHANGE THE DISKS WHEN THEY ARE IN THE PLAYER AND CORRUPT THEM?

 

Howdy peeps; I am still having the problem of my OS being mis-indentified as a lower(earlier 16 bit win 95) and find it less often now that MS worked with me and seems they log-on as my system runs with cable modem "always on". After sending many complaints on issues (seems they keep coming as fast as one gets fixed, another rears up it's ugly head.) My most disturbing problem at this point (and perhaps I should have started a new thread for it, but since many of these fore-amentioned probs still exist, but to a much smaller degree as one by one spyware gets new variants put into the anti-spyware data bases; and new fixes for the really bad ones filter down to us end users to remove them...finally). Yet ,as I started to say my most disturbing problem now is that my task man will show the task man box; but once I pick a choice from it's window (to view or kill running apps) , it shrinks down to the clock area as an ICON that is a square green grid that will show me in red (bar graph style) a generized view of how much of my CPU usage is being drained. And just to get task man to show even that much, I must hit Ctrl, Alt, Delete, 10 - 20 times before it will show the mini graph. It gives me no way to view which app is draining the CPU, but just show me when the red in the little graph "icon" is starting to peg out at 30 to 95% when I get a hang. This used to only happen when "they" had control over my PC. I found a BACKDOOR ZOMBIE which explains HOW they got control before. All seemed somewhat more in my control after removing the zombie and all it's installers (WOW, there were many!!). Security reports showed hundreds, possibly THOUSANDS of PC's were taken partial control away from the owner/user/admin ; and were having their CPU's divided into one small percentage left for the PC infected left intact so user would be able to still use their unit, but only with limited power. The zombie made it possible for the hacker(s) to piggyback hundreds to possibly thousands of PC users CPU's to creat one giant power thief that could break passwords and install malicious code at will to do whatever(steal cc numbers, personal ID theft, even your registration code numbers for your registered software... all the while using your own PC to do it. Some poor peeps had the mass mailings comming from their PC's to make it appear they were doing it.

Anyway, I still have some of the problems l;ingering,yet on a smaller level. But they have found a way to "hide" or corrupt my task man so I cannot kill apps that go out of controll with CPU usage. I believe they still have something they are hiding and if I used task man to kill the offending app, they might lose any grip they still may have (only speculation on my part). Possibly task man was corrupted by my removing "them", and their malious codes hidden or embedded within things like task man. Still my OS get's misidentified, but much less than was before. Main problem now is task man malfuction; AND Pest Patrol identifing spyware hidden by LYCOS within "ID BLASTER". AND now MS BETA Anti-Spyware is identifing "SPYWARE BLASTER" as a KEYLOGGER.........HELP

 

P.S. If I had my task manager back, it sure would help me track down these lingering problems that "almost" were removed.

I am running XP SP2 with SPYGUARD, SPYWARE BLASTER, S&D, PP,WIN PATROL,SECRETMAKER,STOPZILLA,MS BETA,AD-AWARE,VX2 CLEANER PLUGIN,LSP EXPLORER PLUGIN,HIJACK THIS, CW SHREDDER,CA ASSOC. EZARMOR AV, and have no conflicts. I run the malicious (whatever MS calls it) code finder tool that updates every first Tuesday of the month. But none of these are helping me get back my Task Manager. If anyone knows of a download that is supposed to replace or upgrade Task Manager (possibly I have something running in the background that I cannot see that replaces the Task Man's duties, but I cannot open it or it is corrupted? Also no one seems to have any answers to why my system sometimes gets mis-identified as something other than XP SP2.... even though this happens much less frequently with the many removed spywares and blocked spys all the above apps have taken care of. At first I thought ID Blaster had done this to me by changing the way my local system server was communicating with altered folder and file names (because I was ignorant upon how ID Blaster works... and actually I still sort of am ignorant of how it works.....I had thought that had changed my how my OS was percieved by sites for protection {by confusing any wouldbe hackers or spyware/malware/trojans} but it was explained to me it does not work that way). I am trying to keep this thread alive till someone gives me more things to look for. Re-installing from scratch is not an option for me. Pls don't even ask why. It just is not an option.

 

Hi there, first off i dont think you will like my answer but you have many issues going on at the same time. You have tried most of the usual things to identify and or fix problems.
The problem is you used so many different things to fix problems other problems may have been started. example: multiple AV programs firewalls and spyware programs. It is apparent you have tons of spyware and mallware issues.
My advise would be to F: disk your system which can be made using windows 98 save any important folders you may need if possible. Clean the system with F Disk and reinstall windows. Be sure to decide what you want for security and stick to it. A registery cleaner program can be helpful after uninstalling programs if you are not sure how to clean the registery on your own. This will help resolve issues with new programs installed after uninstalling others.
F Disk is much better than just using XP disk to reinstall as it only over rights the system it does not clean it pure. Issues can still arise.
F Disk will make the hard drive like factory new. You can only F Disk so many times as it relocates the Boot files to a new location on the disk.
Others on here may be able to give you better advise but I have found when it gets that bad with your system it is easier and less aggrevasion in the long run to start new. Hope this helps.

 

Hello Nubius;

This is an interesting concept I was unaware of till you enlightened me. I have since(waiting for someone to reply to this thread I have in several newsgroups) fought nightly battles against the spy/mal/worm/zombie/viruses/IE glitches...zapping many with even more beta ware and a few with MS clean-up tools to help me restore .NET and my Task Manager.

I have a couple questions to ask of you. I had a 15 day trial on a restore utility that promised to restore a maximum of three partitions; and as far as I could tell, it restored only one (of six possible on XP). Since I have found out about this possible solution, do you know of what restoration utility may do this as I have since had this trial erased and cannot remember it's name? This is new ground for me and I did not realize it maybe partitions that are corrupted as you suggested. I also used a suggested clean-up tool used by MS techs for cleaning up registry from DOT NET corruptions, and then re-loaded the DOT NET with it's security fix that previously would not download from Windows Update because of the mis-identified OS issue. Also MS restored my MSN I.M. (7.0). Also I downloaded and used Robin Caron's (for Microsoft) User Hive Profile Cleanup Service and this seemed to loosen things up a bit as well. I used that for the control the creators of the Backdoor Zombie had used to create user profiles. These things have all helped give me more control again,yet the lingering mis -identifying of my OS still occurs in about 20% of downloads I attempt to employ.

So all this be said and done, I have to ask you another couple questions. Where can I get a copy of F Disk. Surely you do not refer to my empty F:/ bay. F Disk seems to be a utility that can be purchased a any PC outlet (it is 5:00 AM, so I cannot landline to ask them), Google search seems to indicate this, yet Google is getting sloppy with info these days and I could not easily see it in search. (maybe hijacked to coolwebsearch.......j/k .....lol).

And my 3rd question of you, if you can tolerate my ignorance of the matter is why(and how) do I go about doing this in win98? Why not use XP like my system is supposed to be (is it because it would then over-write my XP data)? And if I cannot control if it is being identified as a win95, win98, NT4 SP1- NT4SP6a, or XP HOME-XP PRO , then how could I control which partition would be hiding my new clean data using this method. I am just too ignorant of this device, yet you have given me a lead to go on which I can persue.....Thank You!! Yet even just a slight bit more info about this maybe helpful. I don't know what the landline will bring me in terms of info when I call up to ask about it, so I am asking just in case they don't know what I am talking about. Thanks again my friend.

 

..i have the same thing you habe, craziest hack i have ever seen, is it wireless remote?

 

AK247, you asked "Is it wireless remote?"

Well, since I posted this(RE: XP sp2 is now mistaken for win95 OS), all kinds of things have come into the public eye. I could not tell you at what point this thing started. (And technically I am not sure if you could call these truly wireless, yet install by e-mail could be considered "wireless" except that it is going over the wires to get to your mailbox.) With rootkits on the rise, keyloggers can be downloaded as a "legal" hacker tool and are so prevalent, I have found 7 of them on my computer since I first posted this. I have noticed most of last years scare of backdoorzombies are now getting squashed by good anti-virus, anti-spyware/malware/krappware and with most anti-virus companies now running free online scanners that you can lookup on Google; BackdoorZombies are becoming last years news. Rootkits can be battled with Ice Sword (made in China, and scary how it deletes anything you ask it to), mimedefang, RootKitRevealer, and others. I have found no rootkits. But YO!! Keyloggers...here is hackerware gone legal/mainstream (until some of the gutless with a few bucks to pay a lawyer feel like defending our American Constitution). I have found 7 of these since January of last year on my p.c. And that does not mean there is not more, or that the one I have found are totally removed. This can be sent by e-mail to your p.c. It gives the sender of the purchased (or even shareware keyloggers..jeesh) hackerware every keystroke you make...which means your passwords, credit card, banking numbers, name,address, phone number, SSN, your very licence numbers to your OS, your girlfriend or daughters personal info (if you ever write to them); PLUS.... it takes screen shots of what you are doing with your computer from one every minute to one per day, whatever they set it to do. This compromise is NOT being tackled by M$, or by any of the forums or newsgroups (BOOO MVP's). Really makes you wonder who is taking kickbacks from the exploding number of companies now offering this hacker ware to the public with no real fight coming from anyone......anyone (lawyers, whitehat hackers, concerned surfers wanting to class-action suit those a-holez??)Even our best allies S&D, SG, AD-Aware, Spyware Blaster are ignoring this worse-of-all ID and CC theft keyloggers being sent out by child molesters and rapists not to mention ID and credit card;check acct info. Where are the DEFENDERS of the Realm Now Taking kickbacks?? Last Jan 05, there were maybe 4 companies using more than one name per co. to make it appear legit as a "monitoring device" for your children's surfing habits or cheating wife. Now there are more than 20 companies jumping on the bandwagon. I wrote 2 of them asking for the uninstaller because their product was illegally installed upon my PC. They responded with sending more keyloggers to my PC to threaten me. My PC froze the very next day. I went into safe mode, uninstalled as many as I could, and then my PC was working again. Trouble is, no anti-virus is running their md5 hashs in their definitions. Uh , yeah...tell me where all the $$$ goes