I've switched ISPs, computers, and such--even reinstalled Windows, going from 2k to XP.

I'm running the Windows version of Apache, the latest, on Windows XP Home edition (I believe it's the Home edition).

I've got numerous problems with my access log. The oldest two are: wierd access attempts, and gibberish. Here's an example of a wierd access attempt:

24.42.139.93 - - [14/Dec/2003:14:13:48 -0500] "GET /scripts/..%25%35%63../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0" 404 306

Here's an example of gibberish:

MHe<O-ˆ¦á„ô£“Òyk„ò¦?Ôˆa
eªK:•Î3£¬»'Cªë$‚‹öºa?Þd¨æôÐBbgmAèdÒx—jÖSiãVN ü
\
&

Note that more then 95% of my Access Log is made up of stuff like this.

Recently, I have two new problems--java code I've made and hosted appearing in my log, and PDB molecules.

PDB Example:
ATOM 477 N VAL 47 48.516 -7.484 35.561
ATOM 478 CA VAL 47 48.590 -8.919 35.777

Note that some of these molecules run as high as 1000. They don't start at 1, though.

Argh, I've even got HTML in here (</Text></Message><Message Date="08/12/2003" Time="3:53:01 PM" DateTime="2003-12-08T20:53:01.464Z" SessionID="187">)

...I strongly suspect my data files are turning up in the access log. Some in binary form (gibberish), some as HTML (I think I know where the files are from), and somehow, some PDB stuff I've never really seen before.

Any ideas what's going on here?

I only know what the weird lines in your access log are..

That will be people trying top hack you.
my logs are full wih that stuff.
I think there has been some exploit in the PWS or IIS because when i use apache the error you get will be 404, Not Found

if you have up-to-date versions of webservers you will be secure and you can just ignore those messages.

btw, AFAIR all the requests like that came from address at my own ISP.
it could be that ISP's are checking for insecure systems..