Windows 2000 Bootup Question (Desktop sorta)

[Yodums]

First of all, I rebooted today and I got this message:

http://members.rogers.com/yodums/OC.jpg

and

http://members.rogers.com/yodums/OC2.jpg

First I removed some jibberish out of my startup using RegCleaner. I also removed something called "WINLOADER." Upon moving those, I had checked for Ad-Ware but it was just cookies that had ad-ware assuming that they have completely nothing to do with this. Anyways, I then ran a virus scan and yet to find anything.

Is there any type of solution to this other than fdisk and reformat? I will probably do it within a week or so when I get my video card back but I would appreciate suggestions.

Corrupted registry is my guess.... ?

Yodums

[Gandalf]

If I could type out all those crazy symbols I would've searched in google, but seeing how I can't, my best guess is that it is a virus.

It would be very odd if Microsoft had those symbols as a file name...

Did you try a virus scan before getting into windows? Or were you at the desktop when you scanned?

EDIT: Try this (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp) online virus scan. It found viruses on my old computer that Norton didn't pick up on.

[H4deS]

I would say its very likely that its a virus/trojan. I had a trojan on my comp the other day and then i deleted it, and now when i start up it looks for a registry entry and a file somewhere on my system so that the trojan can start itself up.

[MajinSSJVegetto]

Housecall online scan (linked above) does so much better than most virus scans. Its just not the best at getting rid of everything.

It is most likely a virus, but it could just be a bit of your HDD got corrupted.