Hi,
I read the no driver stuff at the beginning - but this is related, and may be related to others looking for drivers, as in, I solved my "diagnosed corrupt network driver" problem, not by replacing the driver, but by getting rid of malicious malware. Network driver has recovered, other drivers ? - not sure whats wrong. I was under total attack, 1 program downloaded first (not intentionaly) from a free games site, and within a week had bypassed security - (I must have given it some secret powers just by downloading it) and invited 8 "known to be malicious" exe's, and dozens more. 34 - that were not simple tracking cookies - dates on all of them. Totally alarming stuff was happening, has happened, internet disconnects, (one of the creeps was shutting off Zone Alarm, which disables connection) my burner is dead, my cd player only plays 'select' audio files and only on 1 of my 4 software players. Autorun is dead for data cd's so I can't use my recovery disk. Total Norton AntiVirus messup had to uninstall - which requires elaborate tool downloads and registry editing - what a mess. Any help for disabled CD player and Burner?
Thanks, Cecilia

Hi ^^
Autorun is dead for data cd's so I can't use my recovery disk.
Huh you mean your recovery disk has to run from Windows and is not bootable ?
Are you sure of that ? Not joking ? (Then it's scary ^^ )

How about formating and reinstalling a clean system ? (Do you at least have a CD to install your OS, I mean, NOT a ... let's say thing ^^ ... to make a recovery from a hidden partition, with restrictions about the computer itself for it to work ... )

Hey Constance,
Thanks for responding, The recovery disk is bootable, but for whatever reason, the pc is 'unable' to use the bios instructions to boot from cd first.

Both the CD Rom, and the burner use a Microsoft supplied driver, the one that came with windows. Windows 98 is totally unsupported for updates by microsoft now. They won't let you use thier free gadgets for spyware if you have win98. Like they are trying to pretend they never made it, win98 that is. As you may guess I am totally reluctant to 'start from scratch', cause I would have to accept the major drawbacks from the original release of win98, without the many updates I made over the last 7 years, AND (big) the snoopers at microsoft cannot sneak a peak at what I have on my system. Win98 has excellant protection from unauthorized snooping from 'themselves'.
Everything works now -EXCEPT - the music related stuff - cd burner - almost dead - no reading cd rom - reads only 'some' store bought stuff, and, 'only' on a little program from sony, hhmm...
Windows media player finds the music but won't play. Winamp player can't find music on disks to play. (2 lesser known software players can't find cd stuff either) All 4 software players are working for music on the hard drive.
May have to physically reinstall the actually players is some advice I got so far. While I may have gotten rid of all/ most of the rotten pests, their effects are still lingering - this goes way beyond calling something spyware, definatley malicious malware.
Cecilia

PS: oh no - wierd crap is being added to all the text I've saved over the last few days, what is this ... \par) .. inserted all over the text and some other symbols my keyboard won't reproduce? More germs?
Thanks, Cecilia\par
\par
} <this is what it looks like

Hi Constance,
Just to see... I typed in \par) in a google search and this is one of the results.... ugh, i'm too afraid to go there to further investigate.....
This seach result is bizare - is there only two of us in this forum?

K-PAR Archiving SoftwareK-PAR Archiving Software, archiving software, hsm software, storage software, recording CD, recording DVD, writing MO, writing WORM.
www.k-par.com/ - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

Huh ? Sorry, never heard about some " \par" text before ... but text that inserts itself without you typing it or copying and paste it makes be think about some malware again ;(

Hmm about Windows 98 and its fixes, well windowsupdate.microsoft.com seems to work still ... though you may need to update Internet Explorer first if you still have 4.0 installed to at least 5.0 manually.