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.

 

[Guest]

The Windows XP CD is a bootable CD.

 

[Doug Knox MS-MVP]

The boot disk that is created by XP's "format" function is pretty useless, especially if you're running NTFS for your file system. The XP CD is bootable, and will give you access to Recovery Console. If your computer came with XP preinstalled, and you don't have a "full version" CD, you can obtain the 6 disk floppy set of boot disks here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310994
Obtaining Windows XP Setup Boot Disks

This diskette set will also allow you to access the Recovery Console.

 

[D.Currie]

You've gotten other answers about the boot disk, but as far as AVG, you need
to install it to run it. If you've just copied the AVG folder from your
computer, that's not going to do the trick. If you didn't save the
installation file for it, you can go re-download it, and the good thing is
that then it will be a recently updated version.

Also, if you know the name of the virus, check the AV sites and see if
there's a removal tool for it.