[fishnboys]

Appreciate any help. Have a newer Dell, using XP....no non installed virus protection (I was planning to get something, but didn't use it on the web much). Kid turned off XP firewall to 'surf faster', and didn't tell me. Had a black background on the main XP page after boot that said I was infected, and to go to a link to delete. Ignored it, ran ok for a week. Started getting many disconnects as I was on-line looking for virus info.. Now it only gets as far as the XP 'choose user' screen on boot then locks up....sometimes before that.

Goal: Save my data/picture files, and get it running again.

Question: Can I buy a virus protection package and have it start on boot and hopefully find/eliminate the problem?? If so, how and what are my odds it will work??

Reserached this site and looking at the following virus packages: Kapersky's, nod32 and System Mechanic 5 Pro (which has the Kapersky virus system as I understand). Any best for my use here?? Like the SM5P as it has a lot of other features, but not sure if the virus portion is as robust as the others.

Thanks again for your time, and advice.

[Me__2001]

first thing, give your kids an account with non administrative rights so they cant install or disable anything unless you know about it, also never connect to the net without some kind of protection, atleast have a virus scanner and the XP firewall enabled or a 3rd party one, another thing is to get adaware and spyware protection, read the article about it on here if your not sure what scanners to get

i doubt you'll be able to get your data back easily, the only way that i can think of is to use knoppix, this will give you access to the hard drive and, then you may be able to burn the data to a CD

the ony fix will be a complete format and re-intall of everything, all of the antivirus scanners i know of need to be installed from windows

[richuu]

This shouldn't be too difficult to fix, providing you can get some internet access somewhere else...

There are three things you will always need to keep your PC running sweetly - an antivirus package (I know, too late!) - Grisoft AVG is good, and FREE - go here . Search and ye shall find. Also, download Lavasoft AdAware SE Personal Edition from www.lavasoft.com and Spybot Search & Destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

Download all the updates for each of the three programs. Boot your computer into safe mode (F8 at startup) and you should be able to log in. Install at least Spybot and AdAware - you should be able to update these from downloadable files rather than the inbuilt update features, enabling you to do it from another PC... ask if you don't know what I mean. When all is installed and updated, physicaly disconnect your PC from the internet (removephone line or broadband connection) and run all the checks. Remove anything it finds as dodgy.

When all is done, try booting normally.

Let us know how you get on! Good Luck!

[fishnboys]

Originally Posted by richuu

This shouldn't be too difficult to fix, providing you can get some internet access somewhere else...

There are three things you will always need to keep your PC running sweetly - an antivirus package (I know, too late!) - Grisoft AVG is good, and FREE - go here . Search and ye shall find. Also, download Lavasoft AdAware SE Personal Edition from www.lavasoft.com and Spybot Search & Destroy from http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

Download all the updates for each of the three programs. Boot your computer into safe mode (F8 at startup) and you should be able to log in. Install at least Spybot and AdAware - you should be able to update these from downloadable files rather than the inbuilt update features, enabling you to do it from another PC... ask if you don't know what I mean. When all is installed and updated, physicaly disconnect your PC from the internet (removephone line or broadband connection) and run all the checks. Remove anything it finds as dodgy.

When all is done, try booting normally.

Let us know how you get on! Good Luck!

Unfortuantley F8 Safe mode did nto work.....black screen with the Safe Mode icons at the corners
Ran all diagnostics from Dell and CHKDSK...no luck.

Wondering what my chances are if I install a new HD, with latest virus/spy s/w, then connecting the old drive and trying to get the data back??

Again any input on System Mechanic 5 Pro appreciated. Will get the ones recommended above as well.

Thanks again in advance!

[Adywebb]

System Mechanic 5 Pro comes with Panda Antivirus - I use both and am very happy with them, not sure how this is going to help you in these circumstances though....

[richuu]

Yes, that will work - the only risk being that if your old drive is virus infected, that you could infect your new clean drive when you bring the old one online. That aside, it's something I have done before - I've put an infected drive into a clean, protected computer, and successfully cleaned the infected drive with an AV prog and returned the drive to it's original PC with success. The only thing you have to do is to set the infected drive to a slave before putting it in the other PC, or make sure it's on the secondary channel (but still as a slave if there's already another device on the 2nd channel).

Another option is to make an AV boot disk - a floppyor CD that will boot the system and run an AV prog. There are a few resources on the web about how to do this with F-Prot anti virus.

[jeffpgpc]

I recently lost the HDD on my main machine not to a virus but to my IDE controller going bad on my Motherboard. It has a SATA controller so I was back in business with a faster SATA drive but I could not get my data off of my old IDE drive. I had two solutions. Take my secondary machine down an put my old HDD in it and pull the data off that way. The easiest but more expensive solution was to pucrhase an external HDD case that would allow me to use the HDD as a secondary drive and hook it up to the USB port. It works great and now I had a secondary storage drive that I can back up my data to. Here is a link: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=520U&cat=405 $29.00 US! Not bad

In your situation, you want to do what one of the posts above says to do. Set up your new system with a new HDD and then install a good virus scanner before you hook up the old HDD to the USB port other wise you will reinfec t yourself. After you have installed the virus scanner, make sure it is 100% up to date and Windows is 100% up to date. Now you are ready to hook up the drive. Run a thorough scan of the old HDD and then pull your old Data off. After you are satisfied you have everything (Set it aside after you are done for a day or so to be sure). Format the old HDD.

[fishnboys]

Thanks for the suggestion. Still progressing with a fix. Have a new HDD, MOD32 antivirus and CounterSpy on the way. Did find that I too have SATA, and after researching am confused as to setting up 2 drives....apparently they will not work as master/slave. As mentioned above I do not want to infect all the new stuff!

Is there a way to easily set-up both so they new is the master/boot drive and the second (old) simply a pick in windows??

Dell said put the new in the first MB connection and the old in the second, but from what I have read I am not confident. Seagte tech support (manuf. of both drives) went into great detail about BIOS and CMOS or something settings....way over my head for a phone discussion. Did learn enough though that I need to be careful here.

Like the idea of setting up the old to connect via USB. How would I do this??

Thanks again to all for their help here.

[christopherpostill]

Can you get Sata USB/Firewire cages??

[Me__2001]

Originally Posted by christopherpostill

Can you get Sata USB/Firewire cages??

overclockers sell one thats supposed to work with IDE and SATA

no they dont, its an enclosure