Bad BIOS Issues. No Safe Mode

[jgbarber65]

I was hijacked recently. Apparently I ran an exe with trojan in it and before I realized it they took over my PC. My mistake was to leave my router login set to admin/admin. I also have Sygate FW so I thought I was safe. But Sygate is set to email me and while checking my email from work, I noticed Sygate reported several attacks. It didn't say whether they were successful or not. When I got home, I purchased McAffee AV and I installed MS AntiSpyware. I ran McAffee and it found 8 items but couldn't get rid of some of them so I thought I would run in safe mode. Now I am not new to safe mode. I know how to boot up in safe mode or even setting msconfig to reboot in safemode. I even know how to edit the boot.ini file. It is not a stuck key, or anything like that. I am seriously concerned that this hijacker has reflashed my bios so as to not allow me to reboot in safe mode. Is this possible? Is this likely. I get to the safe mode screen and select it and press enter. It acts like it going into safe mode, (the drivers install) but then it goes into Windows XP normally. This happens no matter how many times I try it. it is stuck in a loop. What can I do to fool the system into booting into safe mode? I know I have crashed before and the system rebooted into safe mode without me even asking it to. Maybe if I could get it to crash it would do it? Also, I have searched many forums like this for similar problems and tried those solutions. They are not working so I need some new ideas. Are there any logs I can post here?

Thank you.

[Phippy]

Just on a lark, download and install unhackme (google it). I think it's up to version 3.03, but I'm not sure. This will check for root kits and it does a pretty good job.

If anyone knows of a better one, I'd sure like to hear about it.

[jgbarber65]

I went back and tried to reboot into normal mode. It wont even let me do that now. I am doing a Windows XP repair install from the CD now to see if that helps. It may turn out to be a bad hard drive

Fortunately, most of my personal data is on my other hard drive. But, my address book, saved emails and favorites are on my c.

I was in DOS at one time and tried to browse for these files and it kept giving Not Authorized....

Forces are working against me here.....

[jgbarber65]

I was doing an XP install repiar. The blue progress bar suddenly turned red and then I got a screen with the following:

A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.

If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps.

Check to be sure you have adequate disk space. If a driver is identified in the stop message, disable the driver or check with the manufactuer for driver updates. Try changing the video adapters.

Check with your hardware vendor for any BIOS updates. Disable BIOS memory option such as cashing or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to remove ot disable components, restart your computer, press F8 to select Advanced Startup Options, and then select Safe Mode.

Technical information:

*** STOP: 0x0000008E (0xC0000005, 0xF9F76C01, 0xF9F2D934, 0x00000000)

*** IncDrec.sys -Address F9f76C01 base at F9F76000, DateStamp 40ebe37b

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I should add, I am using my wife's PC to post here. I cannot get past this problem. What should I do next?

Thanks,
Joe