How to access drive when startup freezes

[Mike E]

Hello,

I'm trying to troubleshoot the neighbors Win XP system; two error windows
come up during startup:

1) Mentions that "Nail.exe" is not a valid program (I've looked up and found
it's spyware)

2) "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for
running MS-DOS and Microsoft windows application, choose "Close' to
terminate the application".
I've checked that and seen many advisories to replace a corrupted
autoexec.nt file.

But after these error boxes are closed, the desktop freezes with only the
wallpaper on it.

How do you proceed in this case? (safe mode does the same thing).

Thanks,
Mike

 

[Rock]

Hello,

I'm trying to troubleshoot the neighbors Win XP system; two error windows
come up during startup:

1) Mentions that "Nail.exe" is not a valid program (I've looked up and found
it's spyware)

2) "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for
running MS-DOS and Microsoft windows application, choose "Close' to
terminate the application".
I've checked that and seen many advisories to replace a corrupted
autoexec.nt file.

But after these error boxes are closed, the desktop freezes with only the
wallpaper on it.

How do you proceed in this case? (safe mode does the same thing).

Thanks,
Mike

First step is to save the data on the system. Put it in another XP
system as a slave drive and backup the important data, if that hasn't
already been done.

Do a google search for how to remove nail.exe and do those steps with it
installed as a slave drive. Then do a thorough scan of the drive as a
slave drive using Adaware, and Spybot S&D, and a thorough AV scan, all
from safe mode. See if it will boot then.

Another option is to create a Bart's PE boot CD,
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/, from a working Win XP system. Add the
plugins for Adaware, and McAfee's scanners. Boot with this CD and do a
scan of the system to remove any malware. AFter that install it as the
boot drive and see if it will boot.

A third option is to do a clean install after saving all important data.