boot disk?

[RB]

What does an XP boot disk do for me?

Is a boot disk one that enables you to take some command of a completely
jammed up PC and run a few programs from CD?

I need a CD that will give me a degree of command so I can go in and clean
up the hard drive on a friend's computer. He has some variation of a
hi-jacker troj (Downloader ). Right now, I'm fighting the following
problems:

1. The pc is hooked to DSL, but OE and IE don't work, so I can't go to any
web sites to get an online A/V scan.

2. Can't run my own copy of AVG that I took over there today (possibly my
fault, as I copied it to "one-time only" CD. Might be I should have used a
read-write one. I'll know tomorrow, as I'm taking a r/w CD over to his
house with AVG/Spybot, and Adaware on it).

3. I don't have any good restore points. Something slicked them out.

4. I can open in Safe Mode, but can't get the things working that I need to
clean the hard drive up.

The Windows opening stuff loads up OK, but I can't run any programs from the
"run" feature in the start menu.

I'm just wondering if a boot disk is what I need.

 

[CJ Rhoads]

You need a bootable CD that has a virus checking program
on it, and perhaps some helpful utilities. To be bootable,
the CD must be formatted a certain way - and I don't think
you can do that, or that the needed system files copy when
you duplicate the disk. It has to be an original bootable
disk.

Additionally, you may need to go into the bios and set the
system to check the CD for a bootability before moving on.

Does the computer have a floppy drive? Then you can do
the same thing with a bootable floppy, and you can create
a bootable floppy yourself - but I don't know how many of
the old utilities work on the newer systems.

The problems that you are having remind me of similar
problems a friend of mine ran into when she installed a
second anti-virus programs (without uninstalling the
first). The copy command wouldn't work! RUN didn't
work. It was very weird. I ended up doing a dirty
reinstall of the operating system, getting her critical
files off the disk, and then reformatting the entire
drive, reinstalling everything from scratch.

Good luck
CJ Rhoads

 

[Incognitus]

re:"hi-jacker troj (Downloader)"
Ad-aware will get rid of that for you:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/