Sister's computer not booting

E

Existence.

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Nov 22, 2007
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Hi, I'm Existence.

My sister has constantly been having PC problems within the last year. She is extremely computer illiterate, and downloads a virus every day.

Recently, she was downloading "songs" on limewire, and on the web. The next day, when she turned on her PC, it got to the Windows User Selection screen, and after about 10 seconds, froze. Now, this problem is happening everytime.

I've tried safe mode, Windows Recovery Console, CHKDSK /R, Last Known Good Settings, etc, but nothing seems to work. What am I missing?

If there is no way to repair windows, would it be possible to transfer the data using some other method?
 
Looks like her computer is bricked. There is really no way to transfer the data, or get into the computer. She downloaded a virus off of limewire, and that caused her computer to brick up. The only thing to do would be to reformat.
 
I would just reformat and never use limewire or any of those programs again.
 
Unless the drive is really hosed, you can probably get the data off. Try a Knoppix boot CD/DVD, and copy the files over the network to some other machine.
 
Yes you can get the data off the drive - but it can be a dangerous thing to do. As Agent86 said, you may be able to get into the computer with a bootable cd. If that doesn't work, you can slave the drive to another computer that has up-to-date virus software and pull off any important data. In general, on an infected machine you should only copy pictures and office documents. Since the problem seems to be with some of her music, it might be hard to separate the infect stuff from the good.
 
There are two things you can do... one is to Slave drive like trykael and agent86 sed. The other would be to try and get a wipe programm that will reformat your drive but keep your OS in tact. Granted you wont have the pics, word doc's, ect but really you dont want to keep thouse anyway because any of em can be infected and you wont know till its too late.
 
[If there's any data on the HDD you wish to recover, make the jumpers a slave and put it into your pc as a slave drive, SATA drives don't need to do this. Move the files to your HDD, then put the HDD back into her PC and follow these instructions]
Start by reformatting the computer completely.

When windows is loaded, download antivirus first (AVG is great) and then download drivers and directx. I would also suggest CCCP if she watches a lot of things on her computer.

Then install these programs for her

Firefox
Ccleaner
Spybot
Ad-Block Plus! for Firefox

And be sure to have an anti-virus like AVG. Oh, and avoid Norton at all costs, that anti-virus is a virus in itself.
 
Don't worry nossr50, I know the common things. I got NOD32 fully updated and ready to be loaded.:)

I was just wondering, could I create another partition on her harddrive, install a fresh copy of Windows XP, copy the files from her regular partition, then format it?
 
You can't partition a drive that's already been partitioned and in use. However, instead of formatting, just pop the Windows disc in and install over the old install. Just change the Windows directory to Windows2 or completely delete the old Windows directory from a command line before starting the install, and try to choose different user names than you used before. All your old files will be intact in their normal places on the hard drive, you'll just have to re-install some things to get the registry entries back. Save files from most games will already be in the correct directory, but otherwise will just need to be moved from the correct Documents and Settings section. Also, you can just move the My Documents folders and the like to the new user names.

Just be sure and try to figure out which file was the virus and tell your sister to stay off the internet without supervision.
 
Yup, I would use Acronis Disk Director if I were doing that, but I just slave drived.

We copied all the files over, and after I ran NOD32, we found 3 viruses on her PC. One of them happened to be a song. :)

I'm installing windows right now on her PC, and believe me, she'll recieve the scolding of a lifetime.
 
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