PC question

[Shaw520]

Long story short, my HP pavilion (celeron running XP) froze up tighter than a drum, got a bad dose of spyware into her, and my AV didnt catch it in time. I've tried system recovery, a boot disc, and nothing works I cant get into windows no-how!! It Keeps trying to boot but windows seems to be gone, I can pull up the dos screen, but it says that windows doesnt exist! ?

I just got a new dell, so Im ok there, but I want to retrieve Pics and Docs from the old HP, and hopefully get it up and going again.

Any tips are greatly appreciated.

 

[Patman]

What version of Windows XP? (i.e. was it patched up?)

 

[Patman]

Ya know maybe the easier plan would be to make the XP drive a slave and pop it in the new system or a external drive case. Then just navigate the folders to your pictures and stuff. It sort of depends just how bad the bad stuff you got is.

 

[LEllis7motox]

You can try putting it in "Safe Mode" then if windows works run your virus scanner. I just got a virus recently and i had to take it to somebody to get it fixed for 20$

 

[julien_d]

setting it up as a slave drive will most likely be fine. Of course, there's always risk of infecting your new machine when you put that drive in as a slave, but that risk exists even from copying your old pictures and files over too, regardless of how it's accomplished.

 

[Shaw520]

setting it up as a slave drive will most likely be fine. Of course, there's always risk of infecting your new machine when you put that drive in as a slave, but that risk exists even from copying your old pictures and files over too, regardless of how it's accomplished.

exactly!, Id rather not chance transfering the virus to the new machine. Id be happy if I could just get the files from the old pc onto a CD and then take what I need from the CD when/if I need it.

FYI,.. the virus I contracted was an AV looking shield that popped up and said I had a virus that was attempting to steal personal information from my computer and for 39.99 I could buy the anti-dote! I knew enough not to open it, but it still infected the system...and eventually seem to eat the path to windows.

 

[julien_d]

Hrm. Sounds like you had more than one problem then. Most of those fake AV applications don't do any real damage to the system other than web redirects and hundreds of annoying popups. I've not seen one yet that actually damages the file system.

I think you'll be ok hooking it up as a slave, just don't open any executable files. Copy what pictures and files you need, then smash the old hard drive with a hammer and toss it out.

J.

 

[FruDaddy]

Is your drive Fat32 or NTFS? If it is FAT then you can try a bootable linux CD such as Knoppix to copy the files to a thumb drive or and external. Then you can rebuild the drive. Linus has a little more trouble reading NTFS discs, but it is still possible. I have seen applications written for the purpose.

 

[Shaw520]

Ntfs

 

[IndyMX]

If you are handy with this sort of thing, and know where to get things.. There is a CD you can get call Hirens.. Do a search in your favorite Bit Torrent search engine.

Once you set the language, and burn it to a CD, you'll have one of the best tools available for fixing problem computers..

I'm using it right now to recover a hard drive in a laptop that was dropped.

Once it fixes the bad sectors, I'm going to use Ghost32 to copy the contents of the drive over to a new drive, and she'll be back in business.

It's also got a bunch of cool tools to clean up virus & spyware crap.

 

[Shaw520]

Indy, I did a little pokin around with that Hirens,... sounds like something I need.... the 'Clean Registry' download maybe just the tool to get my old windows re-opened,... cause I was getting 'registry' errors..... any thoughts ?

Thanks

 

[IndyMX]

That might help.. Don't rightly know off the top of my head...

 

[MrLuckey]

Since it's NTFS you can find and download 'ntfsreader', if I remember correctly it's a dos based program that you'll need a dos boot disk for but it'll find almost anything that is on your hard drive and allow you to copy it. It will concatenate your file names to dos rules but I've used it with great success when I thought all hope was lost...and it's free.

You'll likely pull your hair out trying to get windows running again if it's that bad, although several times I've been able to just reinstall over the top and get it going again.

google bootdisk, there is a place something like bootdisk.com (or similar) that will get you where you want to go.

 

[Shaw520]

Hmm,... good stuff right there Lucky.

I can get the HP into DOS, do ya think I can download the 'ntfsreader' on my good machine, copy to disc, then insert during boot??

...how difficult/$$ is it to get a xp recovery disc?, ( I dont have one)

....or, can I make a recovery disc from my new machine?

(displaying my puter spodeness :whoa: )