Navyguy said:
I havent done anything as yet as I wanted to consider what to do
before I proceeded. It seems however that I'll have to reinstall but I
wanted to consider your other options for saving 'My 'Favorite" links
before doing so. I was going to create a folder in My Documents and
create a Word file and simply copy/paste each link to there and then
burn a CD but it would take forever and I was hoping for a faster way.
So I will go through each link you've provided, plus the pre-
installation check list prior to installing XP I found via the other
link you gave me:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/setup/winxp/install.mspx
I appreciate your time and effort in helping me resolve this problem,
are there any further thoughts/suggestions?
Thanks
Robert
If you're saving the Favorites from Internet Explorer, I'd just
copy all the link files into a folder. They should already be
in a folder. It really depends, on whether Windows is still
running or not, as to how easy that will be. I'd use one of
my maintenance CDs (an alternate OS that can read/write to
NTFS), and make the copy there and save my Favorites that way.
If the computer was still running, and Internet Explorer can start,
you can do a nice job with the File : Import and Export function.
It will create a single web page (HTML type) with all the
favorites in it.
File : Import and Export
Export Favorites
(It should already be highlighting the word "Favorites")
Click Next
Pick a file name for the Exported Bookmarks file
Next
Finish
Now, copy that file (I called mine bookmark_fav.html) to
a safe place. You can also open that page in a web browser,
and you should see all your links.
*******
On the Kaspersky CD malfunction front, I made some progress.
I wasn't even working on your particular problem - I've been
working on stinking Linux for the last two weeks. I'd just
booted a distro, and the screen was all weird colors and
I couldn't see anything. I did some searching, and found a
way to recover the screen. And the same method, gives a
way to get around the EULA and pressing the letter "A".
Now, this is only going to work, if your keyboard isn't
completely dead. If this is a problem with the keyboard
being recognized in XWindows, then it'll be pretty hard
to make any progress. And then, we'll have to stop here.
To test the "completely dead keyboard" theory, when the
EULA screen comes up, try pressing the Caps Lock key. In
the Linux world, if they didn't configure the keyboard properly,
the Caps Lock won't light the LED on the keyboard. My
keyboard has three LEDs. One glows green, when I press
Caps Lock. If Linux can't run the keyboard at all, I
can hammer on the Caps Lock all day long, and there is
no response from the LED. If none of the LEDs that
are controlled by modifier keys work, then you know
that Linux isn't looking at the keyboard at all. And then
we're screwed. If your Caps Lock works, then turn it
off and you can try this next thing.
It turns out, there are a number of modifier key combos,
for messing around. These are the ones I know about.
Control-Alt-delete (Well, that's a Windows one. You
probably know that one.)
Control-Alt-backspace (Linux for "kill the Xserver". That
causes the GUI to start over again.
And is completely useless, for achieving
control of the computer. The EULA will
likely reappear. So this one is no good.)
Now the juicy ones. These use the function keys on the keyboard,
as well as the two modifier keys control and alt.
Control-Alt-F1 (Linux, for switching from Xserver GUI
.... to some console text windows. Those
Control-Alt-F6 windows are places you can run commands.)
Control-Alt-F7 (This one flips back to Xserver GUI, so you
can see whether your hack worked or not.)
OK, so this is the recipe I tried. I can't test your problem,
because I don't know right now, exactly what's wrong with the
keyboard.
What I did first, was try the six different key combinations.
A working console command window appeared on my computer,
when I tried Control-Alt-F4. But it could be any of the
six possible values, that gives you a window to work in.
If you see a flashing cursor in the upper left corner, and
that is all, then move to the next key combo and try again.
Like an MSDOS command window, you can type stuff in there.
You'll see the prompt "Kavrescue # " or something similar.
Your typing will go to the right of the hash. This is the
first command. It does a "process status" and gets the
names of all the programs running in Linux. Grep is a
text filter, that is only going to output lines with the
word EULA in them.
ps aguwwwx | grep EULA
That lists all the programs running on the computer. We need
the info about the EULA holding the screen hostage.
In response, one of the lines will have this on it. This
is the program that needs killing.
/tmp/eulaterm -maximized -e /usr/sbin/EULA
Now, if you look over on the far left of that line, you'll
see something like
root 15705 0.0 1.1
The 15705 number is the PID or process identifier. We'll need
that number in a second, to "hammer" that process.
Now, we need to acknowledge that we read the EULA and accept
the license terms. This is the line I extracted from the bash
script. You type this in, and this fakes the approval.
echo status:accepted > /var/log/eula.log
Next, we're going to kill that white window. Using the number
we got from the ps aguwwwx command above, we do this. The
-9 parameter, is the flavor of killing.
kill -9 15705
(The 9 equals SIGKILL, as seen in the list here.)
http://compute.cnr.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/man-cgi?signal.h+3
And that's it. Now, press Control-Alt-F7 to return to the
green colored GUI environment (the environment they want
you to use). If the recipe worked, the white window should
be gone. If the white window is not gone, you can try
the recipe one more time, checking to see if the /tmp/eulaterm
perhaps got a new PID number or something. And try and kill
the new one.
If the white window is gone, the next step is clicking the
button to get fresh virus definitions. And then, selecting
the partitions to be scanned.
Have fun
Paul
