Okay, I dont think you guys are reading my replies LOL .

I can't log into anything. I can't get into safe mode.


Once I hit to enter safe mode, safe mode loads....than it asks me to log in...I log in..and as soon as I do...it logs me out. Thats in any safe mode.

I can't get into anything.

 

Ok, do selective start and hit N to everything.

 

My 2 cents:

You need a second hard drive, with an OS installed on it. If you have a second computer in the house, just grab the HD out of it.
Stick that second HD in your machine, set it to master, and boot up from it. If you can boot perfectly fine from that drive, then run all of your antivirus and everything else, try to find the problem.

If you do that, make sure that the second hard drive you use doesn't have anything on it that is super important, because there's a chance it'll get infected as well and the whole thing will be a waste of time. tongue.gif

The flipside of that is putting YOUR hard drive as a slave drive in a different computer, and scanning it from there.

You really need to run a scan on your registry too, if you haven't.

 

OK, sorry..

Do you have the original "System Recovery" or "Restore" discs that came with the computer?

(you can do a reformat and still save your documents if you have one of these discs)

 

you wont be able to just swap a hard drive out of another computer and boot from it if its running most windows systems. theres a HAL file that saves ur system config, like which drivers and stuff to load; it wont normaly boot in a different system... safe mode can help, but not always.

instead of putting ur good hard drive in ur dead comp, put the dead one in the working comp then boot how u normaly do. then do w/e virus scans and stuff u normally do fing02.gif

 

Thanks for the advice. I look into the removing that harddrive and tossing into another computer.

At the moment tho I want to try Knoppix. Supercow, I downloaded it, but its 702 MB so I had to burn it on a DVD. Sad thing is...the comp doesnt have a DVD rom LOL.

Also DTN: What are the steps for doing what you mentioned?

 

^^ At the very least, you can put your hard drive into a clean computer, copy your important files over, and reformat your computer after that.
You can start fresh, and retain a backup of the important stuff.

 

it's generally the same idea with knoppix and a thumb drive (btw you only need a cd.. not dvd). You need to be a little linux adapt to do that how ever. Usually when I get a pc with a screwed up windows install I just hook it up to my desktop to pull files. It is the easiest way but I was assuming this was his only pc and he wasn't going to open the case.

btw, when you hook it up to another pc the easiest way so you don't need to worry about jumpers and crap is to hook it up in place of the cd-rom drive and copy your files onto the other hard drive.

edit: here's a quick run down
1. pull hard drive from broken down pc.
2. disconnect ide and power from cd-rom and hook up hard drive in it's place.
3. boot up pc.
4. look in My Computer for the extra hard drive. Should be d: or e: or something along those lines.
5. Copy files to desktop on pc.

important places to look:
documents & settings>your profile>then copy over "my docs" (MOST IMPORTANT), "favorites", maybe "desktop"
Then go hunting for files you might have put in weird places like c:\midget wrestling\, c:\redzman blackmail\, etc.

contact me if you get stuck.