Well, the idiotic situation had a happy, although equally idiotic ending.
I went thru some of the recent posts while logged in in safe mode and read
the post by Barb with an answer by guess who? Of course, Andre Da Costa!
This is what he recommended to Barb.
Take a look at the following article:
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000217.htm
--
Andre
I went thru the article and another one referred from there:
How to enter the BIOS or CMOS setup.
http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000192.htm
They recommend pressing some keys on start up continuously until CMOS
options come up. The trouble is I do not remember now what actually worked.
I think F2 pressed continuously or a combination of ESC and something else.
I wish I could remember. I made about 30 various attempts before this one
worked. All of a sudden CMOS screen came up and I saw a choice: Windows
Vista or Previous Versions of Windows. I do have WinXP on another partition,
I decided it was safer to try the other first. I clicked WinXP and bingo, it
got me there. Signed out and next time a normal CMOS screen appeared like
nothing has happened. I got into my Vista.
I will be coming back with more questions. I need a tutorial as to how to
avoid such situations and it looks this place full of people of knowledge. I
need some reference articles as to how I can make a system boot DVD, etc.
Thanks Andre, although nobody answered my post directly.
>I just had a disaster that apparently many people have experienced and
>there
> should be a solution. I was trying to delete some very unnecessary files
> from my external hard drive that not amenable to a regular procedure with
> deleting thru Windows Explorer==>Left Click==>Delete even with elevation
> of
> all sorts and giving myself full control of that folder. I need to
> reformat
> that folder eventually.
>
> The only thing that worked was running a command prompt as administrator
> and
> deleting files via DOS commands folder by folder. I got tired of it and
> decided that I should turn the UAC temporarily and see if this could help
> me
> to delete the directory wholesale. The computer said that it need a
> restart,
> turned off and when an attempt to restart came up if won't start Windows.
>
> I am typing this method in safe mode. What is the solution?
>
> I have tried many things so far. When I start teh computer at the boot
> first moment when F2 & F12 options appear none of them works. Only F8
> works and I can get into the safe mode although not even every time.
>
> Tried to restore the system back to an earlier point--it does not work
> although the message is successful.
>
> I saved a system image with Windows Backup option but it is on a USB drive
> and it has become invisible after a few hours. Perhaps I will be able to
> bring it back to life. Even if I do I cannot get to CMOS setup to choose
> "Boot from DISK.
>
> I am going to get brand new computer in about 2 wks with the same OS:
> Vista Ultimate. There will be a startup disk and recovery disk I guess. Is
> it my only option to use that disk to try to recover this system?
>
> There is a chance that it is all related to MagicDisk malware which still
> dwells in my system.