XP - Can't open or access anything

[jlcoleman71]

XP machine....worked fine last night, running Excel files, connected to the Internet and this morning....NOTHING.

Internet connection is good, I have another PC connected just fine. The XP PC will not connect.

I ran several virus scans and nothing came up.......I came home from work and it has now rebooted (I did not reboot it) and I can't click any icons to run any progams, I used the keyboard shortcut to access Windows Explorer, which opened but I can't open any folders. I plugged a USB stick into the XP PC but it won't recognize it.

Everything seems to blocked......hardware issue? Virus/Trojan?

I'm not sure what to do......any ideas would be greatly appreciated.

At this point, I would like to try and back up some folders, but I don't know how to do it since I can't seem to open anything up or run any programs.

 

[Jojo]

It sounds like you have a serious malware problem.

It could be a nefarious type which is simply annoying you. More likely, these days, it's a badly written hijacker.

There are other possibilities, but we need to check first.

Can you access SAFE mode. You do this by pressing either F5 or F8 between the BIOS starting but before the HD kicks in.

Select SAFE Mode with Networking.

Wait for that to load and see if you can access anything from there. If you can, download and install, MalwareBytes. Run it.

On the top of the panel, is an option, Scan.

Click that.

An options screen will open. Put a tick beside all listed HDs and against ROOTKIT

Run it. Takes ages.

If you cannot access SAFE Mode or SAFE Mode is the same then you'll need to use Hirens. That's a bit more complicated and I'll wait to see if you need that.