possible virus problem

hi, i'm trying to fix a computer (windows xp, sp 2) for a friend and i suspect its been infected by a virus. when i first booted the computer up it brought me to the user login menu. there were two users - the first was named administrator and was password protected (this account was not created by my friend and she doesn't know where it came from), the second user was my friends account. I couldn't get into the password protected account so i proceeded to login with my friends account. Once i got in i went to control panel and checked users. The only user account listed was my friends account (the one i was currently using) and it had full administrator priveliges. Upon trying to connect to the our university network (cisco clean access agent) i recieved an error message saying that the computer did not meet the requirments blah blah blah. I happen to know that this is the exact same error message you will get if you try to log on to the network with a guest user account. This makes me suspect that the other account is the actual administrator despite what the control panel said. I should also note that when i tried getting on the network cpu usage immediatley jumped to 100%. After looking at the task manager i could see that aol instant messenger was the process sucking up the power. Oddly, after rebooting the password protected "administrator" account was gone and i haven't been able find any sign of it since. - however the connection problems have consistently persisted, and aim continueing to go cpu crazy every couple of boot ups. -0ne more important little clue, the "administrator" account had a little picture of someone dressed in white doing karate or some martial art. you would think this would be easy to google for but so far no luck. :( i'm new to this whole virus thing so any advice would be greatly appreciated -thanks

PS - sorry about writing a book, and i hope i posted this in the right forum

Hi

I would recommend you to boot into the safe mode without networking and do a virus scan with a fully updated antivirus. Also run a fully updated spyware scanner like spybot search and destroy or Adaware.

See what comes up.

Also try reinstalling AOL messenger and see if it behaves the same again after reinstall.

The built-in Administrator account is hidden from Welcome Screen when a user account with Administrator privileges exists and enabled. In Windows XP Home Edition, you can login as built-in Administrator in Safe Mode only. For XP Professional, press CTRL + ALT + DEL twice at the Welcome Screen and input your Administrator password in the classic logon window that appears.

from http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm

scan the machine with the panda online scan to find out what your dealing with...
http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/ActiveScan.htm

then we can figure out what free tools are available to clean.

Does the machine have an AV installed??
Is it up to date??
Is the firewall turned on??
does XP have all the patches??

MLF

edit>>

heres a better link...from the horses mouth ..so to speak

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/327918/en-us

ahhhh, good call morgan. this is starting to look more like just a connection problem of some sort (which might be behind the aim problem too). In any case, thanks for the help