Is there a way to repair XP without reformatting the hard drive?

[paul]

This here's a story about a man named Jed...Oops, wrong
story, but close! My PC was infected with 300+ trojans,
ect., on the first scan with AntiVir. On the second scan,
I upped the heruistics sensitivity to maximum, removing
1000+ Trojans, and suspicious code. As a result, I can't
get to the desktop after rebooting into safe mode and last
known good configuration. My PC goes to the log in screen,
I log in, it briefely flashes the desktop background, then
logs off, back to the login screen.

Is there a way to repair XP without reformatting the hard
drive? My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: drives.
I haven't used FIXMBR 'cuz I think it says it may alter
the partitions?

Thanks and Salud!

Paul

 

[Will Denny]

Hi Paul

Try the following article:

"How to Perform a Windows XP Repair Install"
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Barry Watzman]

There is a repair installation. Start up as if you are going to install
XP to the same partition that it's already installed in. A bit into the
process, it will detect the existing installation and ask you if you
want to repair it. Answer yes, and it will attempt a repair
installation. It's not always successful, however.

Also, no installation of XP will fix a virus in the MBR. You either
need to get that with an AV package, or FDISK/MBR. And you are correct,
there is a risk of losing the partition itself, which is pretty
catastrophic, but it's also a very small risk.

Before trying either of the above approaches, you need to backup any
critical files from the old hard drive, if necessary by mounting the
drive in another PC as a 2nd drive, or by using the repair console
(which is essentially DOS with the ability to access NTFS partitions).
However, if you had set security or encryption, you may be out of luck
unless you have the passwords and encryption keys.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Is there a way to repair XP without reformatting the hard
drive? My hard drive is partitioned into C: and D: drives.
I haven't used FIXMBR 'cuz I think it says it may alter
the partitions?

Fixmbr only deals in the code of the MBR, not the partition table,
unless you had a boot sector virus that displaced those tables If you
had that, it or the DOS FDISK /MBR is liable to make the disk unusable.

Set the BIOS to boot CD before Hard disk, then boot the XP CD, start
Setup (do not take `Repair` at this stage), then after the license
agreement take `Repair Installation`. This will retain your existing
software installations and most settings. But Updates will have to be
run again, especially SP1 unless your CD includes it
;
It is important to activate the basic XP Firewall before you ever
connect to the net to get the patches, so as to be protected against
things like the BLAST worm.

Always back up essential data before doing any major system operation
like this, if you are still in a position to do so