possible virus/trojan/spyware/hijack ??

First, here are the symptoms:

When I click on "My Computer", it does not bring up a list of drives.
Instead, "explorer.exe" starts to consume 99% of cpu resources
(according to task manager). The only way to stop it is to kill
explorer.exe, and then restart it. The same thing happens when I
attempt to start Control Panel. The applications that I have tested
(Internet Explorer, Norton Anti-Virus 2003, CA Anti-Virus, and others)
all run okay.

I have run Spybot Search and Destroy, and AdAware. More than once.

I have run Norton Anti-Virus 2003, with latest virus definitions, more
than once. In addition, I have turned off Norton, installed CA
Anti-Virus 7, downloaded latest virus definitions, and did another
full virus scan.

I have spent several hours searching with Google, and tried several
things found during the search. This would include the smartkiller
for "coolwebsearch" and CWShredder.exe.

This system is running Windows XP SP1, with latest critical patches
applied.

Any ideas? I mean, any ideas at all? That is, short of pouring
gasoline over the computer and throwing a match.

Henry T. Nettles wrote:

> First, here are the symptoms:
>
> When I click on "My Computer", it does not bring up a list of drives.
> Instead, "explorer.exe" starts to consume 99% of cpu resources
> (according to task manager). The only way to stop it is to kill
> explorer.exe, and then restart it. The same thing happens when I
> attempt to start Control Panel.

control panel is actually still explorer...

[snip]
> Any ideas? I mean, any ideas at all? That is, short of pouring
> gasoline over the computer and throwing a match.

possibly explorer is trying to generate a preview of something or is
trying to enumerate available network resources? there are some
diagnostic utils available from sysinternals.com (process explorer,
filemon, regmon) that might give you some more insights as to what the
heck explorer is doing when it goes bonkers like that...

--
"we're the first ones to starve, we're the first ones to die
the first ones in line for that pie in the sky
and we're always the last when the cream is shared out
for the worker is working when the fat cat's about"