Ok, all you Uber-Geeks out there, I’m stumped.

Due to some serious problems I decided to reformat and reload XP.

But, when I tried to do so. I couldn’t “ Administrator Account Only”

I was logged into the Admin Account, which is very hard to do on my system, the password is a combination of random lower and upper letters, numbers and spaces that’s 21 characters long.

I popped out the HDD and took it to a friends place where we added it to his “test box” as a slave then tried to run “Eraser” on it, and couldn’t. Which in itself is weird, Eraser has never failed us yet. I’ve run it on HDD’s that were so fubared nearly everybody else had given up.

Some other oddities.

At times the system will turn itself on in the middle of the night.

Occasionally it will try to connect to the internet, thankfully it can’t, I always enter the logon manually. Sort of a poor man’s added security blanket.

I’m running as security measures;

Zonealarm, freevers, updated weekly.

AVG, updated daily.

Complex random passwords, none less than nine characters, which are changed weekly.

Once a week I run CCleaner, four Spyware utilities. Virus scans are run automatically on a daily basis.

I do have 13 Reg errors, none fatal, but I know they're there. The system is of an age, Intel 815EA Mobo, P III 1 Gig chip, dual HDD’s one 80, one 60 gig. Win XP.

I’ve done a long, boring, thorough search of processes running, programs active, ETC, and found nothing out of the ordinary.

Other than taking it out back and putting a 10MM round through the CPU, any suggestions?

Final note, a couple of months ago I got into a ........ game ........ with a rather good, and persistent gentleman on who could bowb the other’s box the worst. I thought I came out ahead. I might have been wrong. (I wonder if he ever figured out how to Un-Encrypt those files.)