My comp is fooked... Need help please!

[Kyle87T]

Hey everyone,

The past couple of weeks have been a nightmare. I use limewire to download my music and I must have downloaded a corrupt file. Something installed on my computer and was sending me popups every couple minutes. It was unbelievable annoying. Anyways, I put it into safe mode to get some peace and quiet. I stopped getting popups and so I went on using safe mode as my everday mode. I had gone away for vacation last week so I turn off my pc. I get back, turn it on, it takes 3 minutes for the logon screen to come up and another 3 minutes for the "system restore" menu to come up. I then proceed to click on the Mozilla Firefox icon, and it freezes. 5 minutes later it sends an error report saying it has to close down for whatever reason. Since then, I cannot get into any file whatsoever. If I click on an icon it freezes. Thats it.

I have tried reformatting by using the Windows CD, but it wont load in safe mode. I have tried making the DVD drive the 1st drive and making the HD 2nd in BIOS, but that didnt do anything. I think my only option is to scrap the harddrive and maybe I will have to purchase a new OS?

I hope you guys can help. I am killing myself over my stupidity.

 

[thagr81_us]

Try going to your Control Panel then Add or Remove Programs and see if there is anything that doesn't belong... If so, delete it. If you're not sure don't. Happened to me awhile back only I got it from browsing the web. Good luck.

 

[Kyle87T]

Oh, I forgot to mention. There is no start button or task bar on the bottom. I cant click on anything. It just freezes.

 

[thagr81_us]

Hmmmm... Dunno what to tell ya there.

 

[GrimJack]

I assume there is nothing on the machine that you really care about?

Put the WindowsXP CD in the DVD drive.

Fire up your machine.

When it tells you to press any key to boot from the CDRom, press the space bar. Delete your existing partition and reinstall windows. This will take 30-90 minutes depending on your machine speed. The number of viruses that can survive this process can be counted on my fingers. You will lose everything on the machine by using this method.

 

[Kyle87T]

I was hoping I could keep at least my Supra videos. It took my forever to collect them. Is there any way I can?

When will it tell me to press any key?

I put the CD in, but the normal stuff just comes up. The first screen is the motherboard name etc. The second screen is the safe mode option screen. After that is the Windows XP loading screen.

Update: I pressed the space bar during the first screen. Another screen came up talking about your past configuration being discarded etc and only had 1 option. "Profile 1" I clicked on it, a little loading bar came up, but did nothing. Brought me back to the normal safe mode option area.

 

[GrimJack]

Right after the first screen.

Your machine might not be configured to boot from the CDROM, you might have to press the DEL key on startup to enter the BIOS, then find the boot order and set the CDROM to be first.

There are absolutely ways that you can keep whatever data you want from the machine. None of them are very easy, however.

You could pull your hard drive out of the box, take it to a friend who knows computers (because any other novice will just get infected from your HD) have them install it in their machine, and burn whatever you want to CD/DVD.

You could buy a new hard drive, replace your original one, install windows on the new drive, then add your old one back in and copy whatever info you want from the old one to the new one and reformat the old one. You would have to be very careful with this route, as it's very easy to mistakenly copy the infection from the old drive to the new one.

You could pickup an external USB drive, boot from a boot disk, load drivers for the USB drive, and use a command line interface to copy information to the portable drive, reformat your machine, and copy your information back. Same problems as method #2.

You could learn how to disinfect your machine yourself by using one of the computer help forums on the net.

You could take your machine to a shop or hire a consultant to fix it as well, if you have the spare coin to throw at it.

 

[Kyle87T]

I changed the BIOS. The DVDRW is now first on the list. That is where I put my Windows CD, but nothing happens.

Is it the Hard drive that wont let me access any files etc witout it freezing? or is that the computer itself. If it is a virus in my hardrive, what would stop it from doing the same thing to their computer when they try to extract files from it? Click and freeze.

I bought a distribution version of Windows XP Pro. It only came with 1 CD. Is this a problem?

 

[GrimJack]

WinXP is only one disk, so that isn't a problem.

Either your hard drive or your computer could be causing the problem. Have you blown all the dust out of it recently? If it's overheating, or the power supply is mostly dead, you might not be badly infected - however, with your description of popups, I rather doubt this is the problem.

You should be able to boot from your windows XP CD - unless it's some kind of upgrade version, in which case it's not bootable. Try it in a friend's machine, see what happens there - no need to boot completely, just see if it will start to load from the CD.

A virus on your HD doesn't automatically infect any computer you put it into... the code will be there, but unless something activates it, it will remain dormant. This is why I suggest taking it to a friend who knows what they are doing, a novice could easily activate it by accident, and then you would have TWO infected machines to deal with.

 

[Kyle87T]

The Windows XP CD is a full version. I built my pc from the bottom up and I used it to install windows. Brand new with the CD key. I have a 2nd computer. I will see if it will boot up here.

Update: It boots perfectly fine on my other computer, so now I know it works. My PC must be FUBAR.

Another thing I forgot to mention. When I click on Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, or Safe Mode with Command Prompt a bunch of code comes up. Every line has the word Partition in it. Do I need to delete those some how? There are like 20 of them