I have a client who bought a new Dell Dimensions 2350 about 2 years ago. Since then, her kids, neighbors, and god knows who have managed to completely botch this PC. When I went to look at it, the computer was completely infested with spyware, viriis, trojan horses etc.
Ad Adware alone found over 1400 entries of spyware and I couldn't even get Norton AV to properly install on this PC. If i had my druthers, I would have formatted this beast and done a clean install of XP. Of course luck would have it, this owner was rather careless about keeping her CDs in order and has lost the Dell WinXP restore CD.
Has anyone had experience with Dell lately with replacing lost XP restore CDs?? Is this woman gonna have to buy a new/retail copy of XP ? At this point, every attempt to clean this horribly infested PC has proved unsuccessful.
I cleaned up a Dell that is in the same situation a couple months ago, 5 months old, Road Runner, and rookies. It's like mixing bleach and ammonia, 1800 pieces of spyware/scumware and 7 viruses.
Burn a CD containg Spybot S&D beta 1.4, Kaspersky Pro 30 day trial, ZA Pro 15 day trial, Easy Cleaner, A Squared, Trojan Remover, MS Ansti Spy Beta, SpywareBlaster. I'm sure others can suggest more programs. All you need are the installers.
Anyway, install and run them all, it might take a few hours, but that system can be cleaned up.
That system, I got paid $80, free beer while I was there and more free beer at the bar when I was finished. It was the first time I used a Dell, and I will say when it was cleaned up it ran pretty good.
Every Dell that I have come in contact with had the Windows OS on the hard drive somewhere. Different systems have had it in various places so I can't list a specific place.Do a search for I386 folder. One of the latest Dell, a 3100 model, has a restore folder where you can find everything to restore completely.
I've installed and updated most of the anti-spyware removal tools already - the only reason why i posted is because i've already spent an entire day on this computer and it keep freezing up while Ad Aware/ Spybot is scanning the PC.
>Every Dell that I have come in contact with had the Windows >OS on the hard drive somewhere. Different systems have had it >in various places so I can't list a specific place.Do a search >for I386 folder.
Not every Dell. The 4100 Dimensions that I bought 4 years ago, does not have a separate partition with the OS. Perhaps you are thinking of HP computers which are commonly setup that way.
John, if you haven't already, try running Ad-Aware in safe mode. Alternatively, you could run msconfig and disable all startup items. But I think Safe Mode might be easier.
When you're running Ad-Aware, has the computer at any time tried to shut down rather than freeze?
If there is a Certificate of Authenticity decal on the case that has a CD key code, you should be able to do a clean install from an OEM CD. It probably wouldn't hurt to download all the drivers you will need and burn them to a CD before you start.
Behind every good computer... is a jumble of wires 'n stuff.
>John, if you haven't already, try running Ad-Aware in safe >mode. Alternatively, you could run msconfig and disable all >startup items. But I think Safe Mode might be easier. > >When you're running Ad-Aware, has the computer at any time >tried to shut down rather than freeze?
Allyn,
I've already let Spybot S&D do it's cleaning and although it was kickin' & screamin' all the way, I finally managed to get all hte nasties out. Now back to Ad Aware, yes after i posted, the thought of scanning in safe mode had occurred to me. That's going to be my next step.
As far as msconfig goes, that's the 1st thing i always do with client's PCs when diagnosing problems, so no worries there.
When I first ran Ad Aware, it found over 1400 nasties and it froze (no surprise there) during the cleaning/removal phase. Now that Spybot has taken a huge chunk out of that, the count should be less and hopefull in safe mode it will be able to do the job. I'll keep you posted.
Just re-reading this thread for a 4th time lol...do you have a XP disc? If so, you should be able to repair XP no problem. Her key should be there, all that's needed is to use the repair function. Only do this if all else fails.
>Just re-reading this thread for a 4th time lol...do you have >a XP disc? If so, you should be able to repair XP no problem. >Her key should be there, all that's needed is to use the >repair function. Only do this if all else fails.
Powerage, you need to read posts more carefully. As i stated in my original posting above, the owner does not have her WinXP CD.
It may need to be the same "version" of XP for the key to work. IE; if the Dell is an OEM, you may need another OEM disk. Or if it came with XP Pro, & all you had was XP Home, that would not work. But if they were both XP Home Retail, then that shouldn't be a problem.
Sorry I should have known better than trying to offer any suggestions to you. The way you answered Powerage shows you have a chip on your shoulder for some reason.He was giving good info
> Sorry I should have known better than trying to offer any >suggestions to you. >The way you answered Powerage shows you have a chip on your >shoulder for some reason.He was giving good info
Well coming from you Joey, that's a helluva compliment.
As an adult member of this forum none of the comments above are necessary - everyone misreads stuff - everyone misses stuff - and after all we are here to help each other not put each other down - lets us all not forget the legal problems and the honesty most of us show when we try to do the right thing - I'm sure it would be no proble for this guy to just buy a XP CD and charge the custome but I can see that he is doing his best to try to go the "cheapest route possible" and still stay within his legal and ethical standards (good show guy)
As someone noted in this and another post of finding hundreds of problems - I believe this is going to be a more repeat problem that we are going to run into more and more often and the only way to combat it is thru information to the public
There are tons of ads on my TV telling us how to protect our kids on the internet but few if any on protection of the machine itself
Sorry to go off track here but someone got to say it
>There is a program that works in DOS, all you need is a boot >floppy disk. > >Program is F-PROT.
This won't be much help if the drive was formatted with NTFS.
All recent Dell machines that I have seen come with a Dell labeled Windows XP installation disk, and other disks to install drivers and applications. I haven't seen any boot diskettes to recover from a hidden partition.
Behind every good computer... is a jumble of wires 'n stuff.
