noisy HD and RPC termination

I did a complete reinstall of XP Pro a few weeks ago. It seemed to be working OK until I took it to my office. After I got all the cables hooked up, etc., there was a horrible grinding noise from the hard disk. I opened up the cover, thinking that maybe a cable was hitting a fan somewhere, but it clearly was coming from the HD. I turned it on and off a couple of times, then all the noise disappeared and has not been heard in 2 days. However, the computer now keeps shutting down with the message Remote Procedure Call Service terminated unexpectedly. From Knowledge base, I get the impression that RPC involves servers and workstations. This is a standalone, so I'm confused.
Is the HD going? What is the RPC problem all about? Will a reinstall cure everything?
Thanks.
Oh, this is an HP Pavilion with Celeron, 512 Meg RAM.

 

Hi

I am not sure about your HD noise issue but I can advise that the RPC error shutting down your computer is the Blasterworm which has found an 'unpatched' computer; all computers are at risk even if they are standalone as your is and mine.

When you re-installed XP you also needed to reinstall SP1+ all other patches as even a few minutes online a computer can be attacked by this worm. You will need to turn off System Restore and then run the removal tools for the worm. Removal Tools and Patches

You may also have to download the tools for the variants from Symantec's website Symantec

Once you are sure your computer is clean you can turn System Restore back on.

The full details about this can be found at this site

Black Viper Look for how to stop RPC from shutting down etc at the left side of the page.

You will have to make sure you have your AV and Firewall updated and go to Windows update ASAP to download all critical and security updates.

 

The Msblast virus can infect a XP machine with no firewall running within 10 seconds of connecting to the internet, or a local network with another machine already infected.

 

You are so right. I did not put the firewall on when I reloaded everything because I am a cheapo and I use the ZoneAlarm freebie which I did not get installed in time when I moved the computer from home to office.
I couldn't seem to get rid of the virus after the fact, however. So
I would like to try this. I can put the infected drive into another computer which is virus free. If I hook it up as the slave, can I just format it and it will then be squeaky clean, right? After that I put it back into the HP and install XP?

 

Check for Pitshop PAV Virus too....nt

nt