This problem is stumping me...and driving me nuts!

Windows XP Pro SP2
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.8GHz
512 RAM
Running on an APC UPS

Randomly, one of two things happens. either:
1) I get booted out to the welcome screen with no warning (my user is still logged in, programs still running), or
2) all programs I have open are closed without warning and I get the Standby/Shutdown/Restart prompt. I can cancel the prompt (I usually get two prompts at once), but it's already too late because it has already shut all programs and I lose whatever I'm doing.

Situation 1 has been happening for some time, but we were never really sure what was causing it because multiple people use this machine. We need to leave a particular user actively logged in at all time, so we NOTICE when it's booted out...i'll explain more about this in a minute. Situation 2 has just started happening, and is much more annoying since I can't even get a full virus scan COMPLETED without it getting killed because of it. Before today I have never been in front of the machine to see these things happen, but I have now seen both happen while I was working on the machine, and one or the other seems to be OCCURING at least once an hour. It is clearly getting worse.

Now for a little background: This is an older (YET still relatively beefy) machine that we recently started using as a file server and a demo NVR (video recorder) server. We have the audio playing over a speaker system in our office that indicates when users log onto the NVR system...for this reason, the main user needs to always be ACTIVELY logged in. When still logged in, but on the welcome screen (as if switching users)...no audio. However, we use Windows Remote Desktop to get into this machine, so I tweaked it to allow multiple users to log into this machine at once (as if it were server platform) using the following instructions: http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop. This way, we could leave the main user logged in all the time but still get in remotely with other users. I'm only mentioning this, in case this issue is some sort of side affect???

I've been running several virus scans and have not yet found anything, although as mentioned I have not had a full scan successfully without being kicked out. I've scanned by section, but not every file.

Someone please help!!!

Thanks in advance  :-?


What about an online scan like from www.trendmicro.com or Panda? Spyware scans could be helpful as well. Any other anomalies?I did try the TrendMicro online scan...housecall..couldn't get through it before it got shut down by the shutdown prompt.

Yesterday we were able to get through a spybot search and destroy scan, and repaired all found. It hasn't happened yet since we were successful with that. Is it really possible that spyware could be this troubling to a machine? I'm not convinced that spywhere was really the problem....Go to Control Panel / System / Advanced / Startup and Recovery and untick "automatically restart on errors...save exit and re-boot. Now when you have errors you will be greeted with the BSOD which will show cryptic error messages which will help to narrow down the culprit...

Multi user machines are always tougher to diagnose because of the variables at play.

patio.  8-)