Windows 2000/NT forum: Have a Server 2003 question not sure where to post it

You're right Bob I have experience with Desktop OS's, viruses, etc. This experience is perhaps coloring my thinking. Only the owner and myself have access to the server. No one surfs with it, it's just a server with 12 clients.

Why was I asking about running SFC? Because so many things are not accessible, reminds me of a desktop that has had a rootkit change permissions and settings. For example, I can get to control panel, in details view lets say...but the first four items listed do not have identifiable icons, they are the Windows generic "I don't know what these are" icons and no text adjacent to them, the rest of the icons are there with text descriptions as normal. When I select add/remove it doesn't populate the list. So I can't look to see what updates have been installed. When I first logged on I was able to get add/remove to populate. In fact I removed software Yahoo Toolbar, Yahoo updater, Freeze.com, and some PC registry fixer that were not there a week ago. Ironically the owner has a Yahoo account and swears he hasn't downloaded anything. He also accesses the server from home with VNC mapped to a higher port, not 5900. Some things lead me to believe it may be viral or malicious, again desktop os experiences may be swaying this opinion.

The reason I was questioning the RAID condition is that the server will hang for a minute and eventually repaints the screen. For example when logging in, what icons are left on the desktop take way too long to display. Or I can click on something, with task manager up and see little if any CPU activity and then suddenly the machine catches up with the clicks. I've seen this in the PC desktop world when a drive has bad sectors or crosslinked files. They act really slow, not a lot if any CPU usage going on while it's waiting and then suddenly it's displayed.
Also I can see IE 8 open up in the task manager when I click on it and then immediately disappears from the process list without ever opening on the screen. Tried re-installing it and I get an immediate error after selecting run, install, and check install updates, then it errors "Internet Explorer installation did not complete"

Will try to insert a link to photobucket where I put a couple screen shots. not sure it's gonna work.
<a href="http://s1341.beta.photobucket.com/user/winonawhiley/story/27459" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o755/winonawhiley/story/27459/thumb/large.png" border="0" alt="winonawhiley's Story"/></a>

That one is a bit easier to answer. A server is not a client machine. It's job is to serve and uses such as logging in and the screen painting are at a very low priority compared to your average desktop.

I'm sad to read that someone used a registry fixer or cleaner on a server. I bet you know what the moderators here think of that.

I've never updated IE on any server beyond what is required for the server needs. It's a server and we'll only update the security items but not things any user would use since "it's a server."

I'd get rid of VNC too and slowly move the server back to being just that. A server.
Bob

I have been able to browse the drive using Clam Antivirus's File location dialogue box, and have posted some addition screen shots at Photobucket.
http://s1341.beta.photobucket.com/user/winonawhiley/story/27459%22

Any ideas on where to start? or what might be wrong?

If you want to focus on a specific update I can do that. But the pictures are not very usable.

I offered why it's different from a desktop but it appears it is being treated as a desktop/client PC as well as using registry cleaners and more.

Let me be more blunt. Those registry cleaners often remove entries that are there for a reason. Later when some Microsoft update expects that entry and it's gone, you have to think or ask the horrible questions. One of them would be "Should Microsoft deal with entries corrupted or removed by registry cleaners?" My answer is no. We all wish there was some OS repair tool that could push it back to stock without disturbing user apps and files but we seem to be years away from that. Apple came pretty close to this feature.
Bob