Urgent help restoring Win Xp on Thinkpad X30 crazy viruses

My father inlaws X30 has been severely infected with viruses. Now he has A LOT of stuff on it and it can barely function. Sorting out all his files will be a nightmare.

So I seemed to remember there was a way to reinstall ONLY winxp. Ive searched high and low for a guide but no dice.

So anyone here who knows how I can use rescue & recovery to reinstall windows and applications only, while leaving all his files intact?

Any help appreciated. Im only here for 2 days and need to solve it before that, so if anyone can help out - please do!

Thanks

 

I believe you can just go online and find a retail windows xp sp3 iso and use the cd key printed on the bottom of the machine to activate it. This would be the fastest way that I know of of getting an "original" windows xp installation. Note that this will have none of the proprietary drivers at all, so it would be a good idea to get those ahead of time to smooth out the installation process.

 

the OEM key on the bottom of the laptop can't be used with the retail version of the XP OS. This feature was only enabled starting from Vista.

 

My mistake.

 

Hmm, so there is no way to repair the machine and keeping installed programs and files?

He has since lost his 2002 office cds also!

 

have he tried to install Avast home edition (free) and spybot to get rid of the virus, etc.

 

Sounds like your priority is getting his data off the drive.

Since the X30 is older than my X40 I assume it uses an IDE harddrive. So you could do this:
- remove the X30 harddrive
- hook it up to another computer using the IDE to USB adaptor
- copy all his files over
- after his data is safe you could then focus on getting the computer functioning again.....but it might be better just to replace it.

Here's an IDE to USB adaptor at newegg.com
Newegg.com - BYTECC BT-300 USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Adapter

Look on youtube for "ide to usb adaptor"
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Additional info
- AGV is a nice free antivirus software
- comodo is a nice free firewall software
- Microsoft security essentials is another free security software. I set my parents up with this, they use vista.
- Carbonite is an online backup service. For $50/year you can keep his data backed up online so it will be much easier for you to rescue him. He needs an internet connection to use it though. I'm thinking of setting my parents up with this because I know they never backup their stuff, and I just know they are going to loose their outlook pst files and come crying to me. lol.