computer jacked

Edited by Invincible - 08 February 2009 at 3:41pm

http://www.freedrweb.com/livecd/

That will fix it.  Boot from the CD, scan for viruses.  If all else fails, time to reinstall windows.


Edited by WGP guy2 - 08 February 2009 at 4:04pm

High Voltage wrote: Uhh, reinstall XP?

Must had been these guys...hear they are the Terror of the internet.

Easy: Format (will delete everything) and reinstall. Generally, when you cant even boot into safe mode, that means the OS is borked. You could just install the OS again without formatting but then you'd risk reinfection.

Also Easy: Take the hard drive out of the computer, put it in another computer, boot off the clean OS, scan the dirty drive. If the scans find and remove the problem files then hopefully you can just put the drive back in and be back in business.

Harder (but still somewhat easy): When you get it started up (preferably in safe mode), open the task manager. What processes/apps are running? I think I had a similar problem on a computer I fixed for somebody not long ago and running explorer.exe (should always be running) brought everything back. You can either press windows key+R to bring up the run dialog box or you can get to it through the task manager as well. If that doesn't work, open the run dialog box the same way and type in "msconfig" (no quotes) instead. That will let you change some things related to startup such as what programs load automatically. It's fairly likely that this program set itself to load automatically so look for anything odd that is checked under the startup tab (ex: if you see something like "superduperantivirus2008.exe", that's probably something you should disable). Before you start unchecking stuff at random though, take a look at the name and file path. Some of that stuff may be necessary for some hardware/software functionality, such as touchpads, webcams, or printers. If you're unsure what to turn off, google the files. If it's something you need then you'll probably find info saying that file X is called on startup so that device Y can work or because it is part of the OS. Pay attention also to the file path since sometimes people will disguise a virus by using the same name as an OS file but putting it in a different directory. Or you could post a list of the checked items and I can tell you what looks suspicious.

If it's not too hardcore, that might allow you to at least get the OS booted fully so you can run some scans and clean up but if that doesn't do it then it probably corrupted the OS files. In that case, you're pretty much screwed and you should probably just format and reinstall. It's hard to fix the really nasty issues indirectly since it's often required that you do at least part of the removal manually and that can be complicated. Consider the value of the files you have on there now before choosing how to approach this one. If you didn't really have anything important saved then just go ahead and do option 1. It's the safest and the most straightforward. You can also take this opportunity to change how you partition your drive. I highly recommend putting your OS on it's own partition apart from your data. So, for example, partition C will have your OS, programs, and games and partition D will be for all your music, videos, movies, etc. If you have your drive(s) setup this way then you don't have to worry about losing your data if your OS gets messed up, like it just did. You can wipe the OS, install and run some malware scanners to make sure your data isn't infected, and then reinstall all your programs and games. You can make as many partitions as you want but I wouldn't get too specific with them because it will be a pain to change that around later if you decide to reorganize. One for the OS, one for data. That's what I suggest.