I consider myself a fairly knowledgable user. I think I have 1 or maybe 2 virus' in almost 10 years. I've kept my XP machine up to date with updates, I run spyware checkers regularly, registry tuners, I know a little about how to check on processes and what is run on windows startup, though I am no expert. I run AVG free version on my PC, sometimes run PC housecall internet virus scan, have kerio software firewall, and a router.

Recently though, my XP just starting messing up BAD. It was a sixth month old install that had been working fine for 6 months.

Booting the machines -suddenly- started to take 5 minutes.

When I got in the interface was incredibly laggy, again suddenly.

Then randomly I get the RPC shutdown request coming up, which I had read about, but never actually got before. This still seems to happen even if i unplug the ethernet cable!

So, I give up after trying to diagnose this, I lose a load of data and do a format. Things are going fine, then SUDDENLY, though more quickly (a weeks time) the exact same symptoms.

AHHHHHHH!

I have just went out and bought the latest symantec anti virus, no more free virus scanners for me.

I dunno if I can actually get into windows quick enough to install and run this, but does anyone have any ideas what this could be?

The only thing that has been consistent both times is my other hard drive. Maybe there is some virus on it that didn't get picked up by AVG.

OR, if the hard drive was dying (my D: data drive) could that cause the slow boot, lag and shutdowns?

Thanks in advance

Welcome to TechSpot

Your PC shows all the symptoms of either a virus or hijacking.

Download and install the following 4 programs, each in their own permanent directory:
Spybot S&D http://www.safer-networking.org , let it "immunise" your PC, takes only a few seconds.
Adaware Personal SE http://www.lavasoftusa.com
HijackThis http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/
CWshredder http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

Before running any of the above, always make sure you have the latest program-versions,
and do an online-update in Adaware and Spybot for the latest definitions.

Reboot in Safe Mode (press F8 a few times upon booting).
If you have "BeginToSearch" etc. run CWShredder first and let it fix whatever it can.
If not, run Adaware, then Spybot. Let them each fix whatever they can.
Then reboot again in Safe Mode.

Now run Hijackthis with NO other programs open, but DON'T let it do anything yet.
Make sure you first read TomCoyote's instructions on HJT !!
Copy and paste the HJT report here in this thread. We may be able to help you further.

By the way, if you still can, return the Norton AV and swap it for McAfee. They cost the same, but McAfee is a lot less intrusive and does not hog your system-resources.
Withe the above-mentioned programs, you should be able to determine what is going on. Switch on the "heuristics" in AVG and do a full scan, AVG is quite good (though not the best).
If your CPU is 2.2Ghz or better, you could also look into the "Extendia AVK" Antivirus programs from http://www.extendiaavk.com/

Okay, this is slightly off topic, but.... I check a lot of computers daily. And most computers with problems like yours run commercial virus-scanners. First thing I do is remove those and install AntiVir, you can download that for free here http://www.free-av.com/ It's not a perfect program and it looks horrible, but whenever I run it on those pc's it finds huge (I'm talking really big here) amounts of virii that all those expensive programs seem to have missed.
No anti virus program protects you 100%, but as far as I know, AntiVir can detect the most. And no, I don't own any shares ;-)

Read Up:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.blaster.worm.removal.tool.html

Use this:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/FixBlast.exe

All it was was 2 programs ...netlimiter and xfire conflicting. Uninstall either and everything is fine.

In case anyone else has this.