Hi there,
I have some kind of virus/spyware/adware, and some problem winlogin.exe, and I can't seem to get rid of it, so I was thinking about formatting my hard drive.

I was wondering how many times can you format a hard drive, and does it wear it down?
Some people do it every couple of weeks.

Please can you let me know, thx.

You can wipe your drive and reinstall you OS without causing it any problems, it is a physical device which means that it will eventually break down, but not due to this type of use.

This topic should be posted in the Viruses, Spyware and other Nasties forum. The winlogin.exe is a worm that winds up in the registry and needs to be removed from there. The following information comes from another web site.

1) Download SDFix and save it to your Desktop. http://downloads.andymanchesta.com/R...ools/SDFix.zip

Double click SDFix.exe and choose Install to extract it to its own folder on the Desktop. Please then reboot your computer in Safe Mode by doing the following :

* Restart your computer
* After hearing your computer beep once during startup, but before the Windows icon appears, tap the F8 key continually;
* Instead of Windows loading as normal, the Advanced Options Menu should appear;
* Select the first option, to run Windows in Safe Mode, then press Enter.
* Choose your usual account.

* Open the extracted SDFix folder and double click RunThis.bat to start the script.
* Type Y to begin the cleanup process.
* It will remove any Trojan Services or Registry Entries found then prompt you to press any key to Reboot.
* Press any Key and it will restart the PC.
* When the PC restarts the Fixtool will run again and complete the removal process then display Finished, press any key to end the script and load your desktop icons.
* Once the desktop icons load the SDFix report will open on screen and also save into the SDFix folder as Report.txt.