Hello, PC Help Forum!

You may remember me as the guy who screwed up his own security center in XP and then dropped off the face of the earth. That problem ended up being "solved" when the computer was destroyed in a basement flood. At that point there wasn't much point posting a new HijackThis log so I called it quits.

I have sent people here in the interim remembering the great assistance you all were to me, and now I am seeking your help once again.

After the old computer died, I replaced it with a new one. A good one, as well... the Alienware m9750, built with gaming in mind. Lately it's been running slowly. I did virus and spyware scans and removed a few viruses from it (like Lop... *shudder*), but it now reads clean under AVG and AdAware. I called up the Alienware support folks and said, "I know this computer should be performing better than this... I have seen it do so. Is some of the hardware failing?" The agent suggested that, after looking at my computer remotely, I clear my desktop. I took about 2 gigs of stuff off the desktop and suddenly everything was smooth as silk. I thought I had solved everything simply.

Well, this lasted about 90 minutes, and then in the middle of a game everything turned choppy again and I was back where I started.

There is another problem which may be related. Every time I boot the machine, I get a Run DLL error that says that "hmwtwrfc.dll" is missing. I recognize this as one of the DLLs that AVG got rid of. So, either AVG deleted a DLL critical to a startup process, or I still have a virus somewhere looking for its little lost DLL. The Internet is a black hole of information on this one... a search for "hmwtwrfc" revealed nothing on google, yahoo, or even AltaVista. It's like nobody's even heard of this DLL before.

Well, if anyone can help me, it would be the fine folks here at PCHF, so I'll throw this mystery out to you folks and see what you come up with. Thanks in advance!

Computer Specs, since some folks like them. I let Xfire generate it which is why there are wierd fields like 'Mouse Surface':
Manufacturer:alienware
Processor:Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T7600 @ 2.33GHz (2 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory:2046MB RAM
Hard Drive:491 GB
Video Card:NVIDIA GeForce Go 7950 GTX
Monitor:Generic PnP Monitor
Sound Card:Speakers (Realtek High Definition Audio)
Speakers/Headphones:
Keyboard:USB Root Hub
Mouse:USB Root Hub
Mouse Surface:
Operating System:Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_gdr.070627-1500)

Welcome back

Whilst it may seem long-winded but bearing in mind that "hmwtwrfc.dll" is completely unique to your PC (check Google) - let's run thru the Pre-Work routine (link below) to be sure that you are not infected.

Freow! Well, hours and hours of scanning later, I've got logs for you. However, I had a few problems following the directions from the thread you indicated. AVG seems to have changed since that thread was written. The 'settings' tab and 'recommended actions' flat out don't exist. Quarantine seems to now be called "The Virus Vault". Finally, the thread seemed to say that I was meant to update AVG and SuperAntiSpyware once I was in safemode, but since there's no network communication in safemode, I did it before I went into SF. Anyway, the point is:

1. I think I got the right logs
2. Lop seems to be hanging on after all according to the fact that AVG found it 126 times. ****.

See attached logs.

Attached Files

	03 SUPERAntiSpyware Scan Log - 12-29-2007 - 18-00-30.txt (31.6 KB, 0 views)
	04 HJT Log.txt (10.8 KB, 2 views)
	01 AVG Scan Summary.txt (6.2 KB, 0 views)
	02 AVG History.txt (21.7 KB, 1 views)

Moved thread to HJT forum.

Probably a good idea since it's now all going to br about HJT (How did we live before HJT, anyway?). Thanks!

Well? Any suggestions, anyone?