With no warning signs of any failure, the system will no longer boot into Windows XP correctly. No icons, no desktop and no taskbars appear. This makes it very hard to use.

Tried a few suggestions to fix this.for example run sfc /scannow to repair from the CD - no luck. Tried to go back to a restore point, but they all fail. It’s possible to actually run programs in a roundabout manner and they all execute correctly, so it seems that just the GUI interface is destroyed. After a day of trying patches and fixes, it’s not getting anywhere so a WIndows reinstall is in order.

Luckily I’m aware of the Slipstream installation - Slipstreaming Windows XP with Service Pack 2 (SP2) This allows me to take my existing install, which is probably mostly intact, together with all the patches I’ve downloaded over the last year or so since I frst installed, and create a new installation CD. Without this, I would have to reinstall from the original CD, and then apply all the patches, a process that might take a day or so.

Note this procedure also requires isobuster - which can be found at the Smart Projects Web site

The step should be followed carefully, since it’s by no means the normal procedure for creating a CD, it uses a lot of options you probably never saw before, and are unlikely to see again.

The end result is however a new install CD, which does work, and makes this whole exercise a lot less painfull than it could have been.

The weird otmaker is now installed again. It’s back in windows\system and also system startup. I’ve run Ad-Aware and Norton AntiVirus and nothing was found. This system normally runs in Windows 98SE, but booted into Windows XP and run the Microsoft Beta Adware, and again nothing found. It seems it might be connected to cfgwiz32.exe.

Manually removed cfgwiz32.exe and otmaker.

The computer (Win98SE) is misbehaving, a couple of applications are not running correctly. After some checking and detective work, there seems to be an unknown application Otmaker running, ctrl+alt+del, stops it but then a new application thnal5c starts up. Checking in the temp directory, there are indications this application was installed yesterday by some unknown process. There are also related files installed in Windows/Systm. Removed the files and the system is behaving ok again.

Searched the internet for Otmaker - but other than a post in a forum dated this week, there are no traces of it.