Help from friends!

Hello all. I am not sure where to get help from on a paticular topic so I am coming here since this is one of the best communities I have ever been a part of.

I Recently got some sort of virus/spyware on my desktop and tried to take it on myself. It started by showing a red circle with a white X icon in my task bar. To make a long story short, I end up not being able to load windows at all. All I can do is get to the DOS style Windows Recovery Tool.

I really do not want to reformat. So if you guys could help me out or Send me to a place where I can get help, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

 

Did you try running in safe mode and running a virus scan?

 

I can not get into any mode.

 

You could try your windows install disc and boot up to that. You may be able to recover enough from there to get to safemode to do a scan / malware removal.

 

I'd advise you to not boot up windows at all as the virus could do further damage to your files.

Instead get a CD or USB flash stick and make a live boot disk of linux (i.e. Ubuntu, Fedora, Knoppix, etc). From there you can run linux utilities to recover files from your NTFS partition (assuming it still exists).

If you plan on using Windows again, I would suggest you reformat - especially if it's a virus and not spyware.

 

Im not sure how to recover anything from the boot cd. I get two options repair and new install.

 

You can do repair. I would not do a new install. The linux method is an option but you need to know what you are doing to do that. I don't mess with Linux which is why I recommended the install disk.

 

Well i am trying to do repair but i do not know where to go from hitting "R" from the boot disc. Then its takes me to some DOS thing

 

Hum.. haven't done the DOS repair window in a while and I think most commands there are basic. Think typing help lists the commands. If you have another computer or a friends you can borrow, you need to lookup "red circle white x removal" as there's plenty of links on how to remove. The problem you have now is even if you can remove the bad files in the DOS window your machine is not booting (into safe mode or windows) due to whatever was done prior by the malware or by you trying to remove it.
Another option would be to put in a spare HD and load a fresh copy of the OS, put the main drive in as a 2ndary after the OS is loaded. Then do scans on it to remove the malware and/or move your files off to the new HD.

 

THats sounds good. I have two hard drives on the desktop. One just has media files on it and the other has the broken windows on it. How would I go about doing that? Just install windows on the new hard drive? How would I get it to boot from the fresh hard drive and not the bad?

 

In order to use another HD you need to swap them in the case to make it the primary as opposed to the slave. The cables if IDE, if Sata normally jumpers (if I'm not mistaken). Normally I'd just unplug the power and connector to the 1st drive so it looks like it's not there. You need to know hardware wise what you have in order to do this. If unsure you need help, someone who can look at the internals.
I wouldn't use the 2nd drive you have as it has data on it right now.

Is there anything other than your programs on your 1st drive that failed?
If not and you have all your software you could just reformat it (all data is gone), update to latest service packs, then load all your programs again IF there's no data except program files and you don't need anything off the primary drive.
This assumes you have all your installs somewhere or know where to get them and reinstall them as well as the OS.

 

Depending on your BIOS you should have an option to select which HDD to boot from or to boot from the CD ROM drive. Just hit the F2 key repeatedly (might be a different key for your desktop) as soon as the BIOS screen appears and that will bring you into the BIOS menu. There should be an option to select boot priority.