So I turn on my laptop and within 5 minutes the fans turn on high and the thing is smoking hot.

When I tried to use alt + cntrl + del to see if anything was running and using up the processor and ram to make it do that, the task manager won't come up.

I have tried to scanning with Ad-aware, norton, another virus scan, and just about all i can think about.

I have searched everywhere to see if I could fix it, or download the task manager, or install it off the windows cd, but nothing will work.

Does anyone have any idea what has happened and how I can fix it?

You may want to call windows for this one.

It could be some type of virus or spyware infection I'm afraid... you should post a hijackthis log in our viruses, spyware and nasties forum.

Sounds more like a hardware issue than a software one!

1. Try this;

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kba...XPHomePro.html

try the gpedit first, and only then look at the registry if you are happy to do some, but as ever, tweaking registry can seriously mess up your PC.

2. go to

c:\windows\system32 or c:\winnt\system32

look for taskmgr. Is it there?

If it is, can you run that command, or from right-clicking the task bar, and selecting task manager.

If the file does not exist, then get you XP CD, search the CD for taskmgr, and add it to your system32 directory.

Let me know if this is helpful or not.

well i think i got it figured out. i found the task manager and ran it and saw that some stupid program called winupdates/winupdates.exe/auto was using 50% of my processor. turned this gay thing off and my comp calmed down instanly and alt + cntl + del worked again. when i go and look in program files where it says this winupdates thing is, it aint there. ran a search and it ain no where. ran msconfig and saw that the supid thing was starting up everytime windows was.

how can i clear out my startup files in msconfig? i mean not just uncheck them, but remove them. i have like 30 in there and some a repeated 2 or 3 times.

so task manager works now, but now i need to delete this winupdates thing. ever heard of it?

also i have no system 32 folder, i thought i had one at one time, and i pretty sure i should have one, any ideas? i have a windows/system folder.

also when i searched for taskmgr it found the .exe in 2 spots. c:/windows/$NtServicePackUnistall$ and c:/Windows/ServicePackFiles/i386 both of them start the task manager. i think all the stuff that should be in system 32 are in the servicepackfiles folder for some reason (b/c there is like 2400 files in there: mostly .dll and .sys files).

winupdates is a virus and am working on removing it.

Good luck with the virus removal, place a post in the virus forum here if you get major problems some one will be able to help.

System can be system32, depends on your OS. I would do the following;

Run from the start menu run command

C:\windows\system32

and see if anything appears. Maybe it is a hidden folder.

General Windows startup entries are stored in the registry key:
HKLM/softwares/microsoft/windows/Run

You should enable all the items from msconfig and then remove the unwanted from the registry... or if you feel uncomfortable with registry editing .. you can use advanced tweek se or any other tweeking software that can edit startup entries.

thanks alot man that helps alot.