Can I re-install from flash drive? post-virus

K

kplumm

I didn't at first assume this problem was started by a virus but am at
least half sure it was now. My CD drive broke down and keyboard went
haywire. First the keyboard wouldn't react to h, 4, or 6 being
pressed, then whatever I typed it would keep acting as if I was
pressing ther Home key too. I tried all that enable DMA stuff with
the CD drive, which for a while was playing CDs but not DVDs, then
briefly played some DVDs before croaking altogether. It won't read a
CD-rom so I can't use my recovery disk. I laboriously copied that
onto a flash disk with my dad's Vista computer and have today tried to
get things going that way. I've looked at the BIOs, which someone nw
tells me can have become messed up by a possible virus (should I be
able to access the CD/DVD drive settings using the BIOS? I can't). I
have no money to get a professional to do this, and the manufacturers
themselves, Fujitsu-Siemens, want about 5 times as much money as any
local repairer. There's nowhere I can borrow and external CD drive to
use the recovery disk, no floppy on the machine, and somehow I can't
format the C drive to get rid of the corrupted Windows, maybe that was
one of the brave and intelligent things the virus program-writer
brought about. I have been able to get out these jams with Win 95 and
98 machines (reinstalling, I mean; they had not been in any situation
where a virus could have come into it). The machine takes an odd and
impossible to find CD drive, my local repairer drew a blank with his
various suppliers.

I had considered that the problems were entirely mechanical until one
System Restore or another changed the situation temporarily (with both
the keyboard and CD problems) - until, perhaps, the virus kicked in
again.

I have scarcely been near any risky sites, and certainly not to
download anything. I have had no virus protection, just the XP
firewalls, which may seem crazy to some, but it had seemed i'd been
safe for years, and have seldome taken risks, and thought the XP
Firewall should be enough.

I am right, aren't I: viruses are not made by isolated individuals but
part of the planned obsolescence of these machines, the programmers
work with Norton et al? Yes, I am a bit hacked off, ha ha. These
stupid, wasteful b*stards.

I'm in an i-cafe now, and had left the flash disk's Windows recovery
files to do a repair, but I'm not hopeful. An attempt to make a clean
install brought me merely to a blue screen error message.

The long and the short is, how can I get this machine into an out of
the box state? It's spec is still pretty good, and it's only 3 years
old. Is it cabbaged?

Thanks for all help.
 
D

David H. Lipman

From: "kplumm" <[email protected]>

< snip >

|
| I am right, aren't I: viruses are not made by isolated individuals but
| part of the planned obsolescence of these machines, the programmers
| work with Norton et al? Yes, I am a bit hacked off, ha ha. These
| stupid, wasteful b*stards.


< snip >

No, you are *completely* wrong !
 

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