There's no need to send it back; it's not a hardware problem. Now I forget - has he tried formatting the disk and reinstalling the OS? What disks, if any, did he get with the machine (or make himself)?
It really doesn't sound like any virus I'm familiar with. I mean, creating partitions and changing users? That right away puts a user on notice that there's a problem - just what today's viruses try to avoid. >makes tons of network connections using Media Player This may be the giveaway that it's not a virus per se, but rather malware that was invited in at some point. Which leads back to the bcd search results. Anyway, a format and OS reinstall is the thing to do. He may need to order disks from Dell if he doesn't have any. ************************************************************************* ** List info, subscription management, list rules, archives, privacy ** ** policy, calmness, a member map, and more at http://www.cguys.org/ ** *************************************************************************
