Well, after a bit of research on this problem this is the only viable explanation I could come up with on this problem. Victim of RIAA attacks. I find this interesting in that it only affects p2p software and absolutely nothing else. I seem to have the symptoms of the "freeze" program. I read also the only way to get rid of this is to wipe your hard drive and start over. People aren't sure exactly how to get rid of it. I'm gonna wipe my hard drive and see how it works in the morning when i get it back and running firewalls and antivirus on. Wish me luck.


'Music industry agents' to ruin your day
"Record-label hackers should wipe out the computers of people who swap MP3s. That's the nuclear option Utah senator Orrin Hatch recommends."

Yep. And,

"Meanwhile, peer-to-peer special ops have already begun. The courts have been busy - and are likely to get busier - with Recording Industry Association of America lawsuits. The labels have also quietly contracted elite gray-hat hackers and small computer security companies to thwart music file-sharing. According to one self-described anti-pirate, 'It's eye-for-an-eye time.' Here are some of the anti-P2P programs and their industry codenames."

These are the two lead paragraphs in a Wired article entitled Minsters of Rock with, Meet the music industry agents that could ruin your downloading career as the sub-head.

And the 'agents' are: Antinode, Fester, Freeze, Shame, Silence, Suck and Tattle.

Reads a bit like partners in a law firm, No? (Sorry Larry : )

Underneath, you'll see what each name means and under that are italicized comments from Steve Hinkle.

Antinode Creates fake "supernodes," signposts used by some file-sharing technologies (Kazaa, for example) to guide users' computers to files. The pseudo-supernodes distribute misleading file information.

People will BLOCK THIS WITH PEERGUARDIAN AND OTHER BLOCKING SYSTEMS!

Fester Puts the word out on file-sharing networks that RIAA servers have music files for download. The servers redirect users to black hole sites, tying them up indefinitely. Newer P2P clients drop useless connections more quickly, so this approach may already be obsolete.

Users will find these IPs and not download them! They may be blocked as well by consumers.

Freeze Uses an existing bug in P2P clients to remotely "hang" computers hunting for MP3s. The result could be more than mere frustration - unsaved data can be lost during a long hang. It's in development now.

Someone will write an anti-virus signature, or use P2P apps that do not have this, or write a patch file!

Shame If implemented, would distribute a benign P2P virus in an illegal media file that adds the words "I steal music on the Internet" to a user's email signature. Expect to see that appear as a slogan on T-shirts a few minutes later.

This would likely be circumvented with an anti-virus signature, or a manual edit of the signature file, and it be set read-only.

Silence Scans computers on P2P networks for illegal material, hacks into the pirate machine, and deletes the data. One problem: Early versions delete legal MP3s, too.

Users backup their files before this hits, then delete this "deletion virus", and restore their backups.

Suck Scours the Net for large libraries of MP3s, and then starts asking for files. And asking. And asking. Eventually, the requests clog library owners' connections like hair in a pipe - and if the RIAA is using that bandwidth, then nobody else is. As a bonus, this approach generates huge volumes of data traffic, driving up pirates' usage and incurring the wrath of ISPs.

This could be equated to a denial-of-service attack, and a virus and would likely violate computer crime laws. If the RIAA is behind this, who would want to contribute files?

Tattle Recruits other industries. If you have lots of liberated music, chances are you also have a few pieces of software that fell off the back of a truck. Recording industry bots already track online piracy - insiders have suggested the RIAA share that information with the software and movie industries.

This is doable, however you still have the concept of "innocent till proven guilty". This could result in class actions back. See www.directvdefense.org for a similar concept with smart card products, of people who did not intend to use them for signal theft. This is a similar concept.