WinXP wont activate after trojan / repair install

  • Thread starter Thread starter Newman
  • Start date Start date
N

Newman

I recently had a trojan manage to infect my Master Boot Record.

Symptoms were slow internet access and constant browser hijacking.
None of the conventional methods detected this. I actually installed a
second hard disk and a temporary copy of Win7. Once that was done, I
scanned my XP disk (with the trojan completely inactive).

Once I discovered the trojan, I booted a Partition Wizard 5 CD and
repaired the MBR on the WinXP disk. A quick reboot and WinXP worked -
at first. Then WinXP told me I needed some updated. I went to install
them, and they all failed. Then I was prompted to reboot - which I
did. Windows did a BSOD on the shutdown and then auto rebooted -
resulting in a 0x0000007B (0xBA4CF524, 0xC0000034) BSOD taking about
disk curruption.

I booted back into Win7 and did a CHKDSK /F on the WinXP drive. Still
BSOD 7B. I booted a WinXP CD and tried to do a repair install - on
reboot BSOD 7B!

I Booted the WinXP CD again and went into the Repair Command Prompt. I
issued the FIXMBR, and rebooted. Windows came back to life! THEN I get
the stupiest message ever! When I try to log in, "Your version of
windows needs to be activated before you can log in. Do you want to
activate windows now?".

Of course I say "Yes", and it just hangs on the spot. waited 30 min,
no joy. Multiple reboots, no joy. And I Googled and got this process -
which WORKS!

Thought I would pass it along for reference:


PROBLEM SOLVED!

- Reboot the computer and press <F8> to get the boot menu.
- Boot into "Safe Mode with Command Prompt"
- At the command prompt, enter the command "Explorer"
- If all is well, at this point your desktop should appear.
- Reinstall IE8 from a USB stick making sure you uncheck the "download
updates".
- Reboot your computer
- When you try to log in, Windows will make the usual activation
complaint'
- Say "Yes", and wait. The activation screen will appear
- proceed through the activation process - YOU'RE DONE!

worked for me like a charm. Hope this helps someone!

:)
 
Being so grateful to whatever-powers-that-be is natural after successfully
bringing your Window's installation back from death.

However, the likelihood that someone else has got themselves into the
exact-same predicament is very unlikely.

What I would suggest to you, if you genuinely wanted to help others work
through similar potential catastrophes such as your case, would be to keep
coming back to a newsgroup like this one.

If you have had a few experiences of getting yourself out of tight corners,
you could well be able to give valuable advice to someone to help them out
of similar situations.

If not, and you are just content with posting a genuine procedure for
getting out of a very specific situation, then here are a couple of things
that might help make it more accessible.

It won't appear immediately, but your post on a usernet newsgroup will
eventually find it's way into the popular search-engine's databases. So
somewhere in your post you should specify an exacting description of who
the procedure is aimed at or what problem it will solve and what the
procedure will manage to accomplish. This will help anyone with the same or
similar problem to be directed to read your item when they enter their
search-terms in google or the like.

Hoping this will be of some encouragement to you,

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)
 
Hi Tim,

I am aware of most of what you said. I tried to include some stuff in
the message so that those (like myself) who Google would have a shot
at finding this information. I tried Googling and did not find
anything quite like this. Having said that, I suppose I can always
improve the searchability of a post - especially a useful one! ;)

I do come to the group - just not as often as I would like. I have
obtained lots of help both directly, and info gleaned from Googling -
so when I can give back, I like too. Got more support here than I ever
did from Microsoft!

Thanks for the pointers.


Being so grateful to whatever-powers-that-be is natural after successfully
bringing your Window's installation back from death.

However, the likelihood that someone else has got themselves into the
exact-same predicament is very unlikely.

What I would suggest to you, if you genuinely wanted to help others work
through similar potential catastrophes such as your case, would be to keep
coming back to a newsgroup like this one.

If you have had a few experiences of getting yourself out of tight corners,
you could well be able to give valuable advice to someone to help them out
of similar situations.

If not, and you are just content with posting a genuine procedure for
getting out of a very specific situation, then here are a couple of things
that might help make it more accessible.

It won't appear immediately, but your post on a usernet newsgroup will
eventually find it's way into the popular search-engine's databases. So
somewhere in your post you should specify an exacting description of who
the procedure is aimed at or what problem it will solve and what the
procedure will manage to accomplish. This will help anyone with the same or
similar problem to be directed to read your item when they enter their
search-terms in google or the like.

Hoping this will be of some encouragement to you,

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




Newman said:
I recently had a trojan manage to infect my Master Boot Record.

Symptoms were slow internet access and constant browser hijacking.
None of the conventional methods detected this. I actually installed a
second hard disk and a temporary copy of Win7. Once that was done, I
scanned my XP disk (with the trojan completely inactive).

Once I discovered the trojan, I booted a Partition Wizard 5 CD and
repaired the MBR on the WinXP disk. A quick reboot and WinXP worked -
at first. Then WinXP told me I needed some updated. I went to install
them, and they all failed. Then I was prompted to reboot - which I
did. Windows did a BSOD on the shutdown and then auto rebooted -
resulting in a 0x0000007B (0xBA4CF524, 0xC0000034) BSOD taking about
disk curruption.

I booted back into Win7 and did a CHKDSK /F on the WinXP drive. Still
BSOD 7B. I booted a WinXP CD and tried to do a repair install - on
reboot BSOD 7B!

I Booted the WinXP CD again and went into the Repair Command Prompt. I
issued the FIXMBR, and rebooted. Windows came back to life! THEN I get
the stupiest message ever! When I try to log in, "Your version of
windows needs to be activated before you can log in. Do you want to
activate windows now?".

Of course I say "Yes", and it just hangs on the spot. waited 30 min,
no joy. Multiple reboots, no joy. And I Googled and got this process -
which WORKS!

Thought I would pass it along for reference:


PROBLEM SOLVED!

- Reboot the computer and press <F8> to get the boot menu.
- Boot into "Safe Mode with Command Prompt"
- At the command prompt, enter the command "Explorer"
- If all is well, at this point your desktop should appear.
- Reinstall IE8 from a USB stick making sure you uncheck the "download
updates".
- Reboot your computer
- When you try to log in, Windows will make the usual activation
complaint'
- Say "Yes", and wait. The activation screen will appear
- proceed through the activation process - YOU'RE DONE!

worked for me like a charm. Hope this helps someone!

:)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
It can take up to a month or even longer for information posted to the
public newsgroups to enter the Google search database.

But it does get there, try googling my name (or "foxidrive" or "VanguardLH"
(include "quotes") ) and you'll see the results contain many newsgroup
postings.

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




Newman said:
Hi Tim,

I am aware of most of what you said. I tried to include some stuff in
the message so that those (like myself) who Google would have a shot
at finding this information. I tried Googling and did not find
anything quite like this. Having said that, I suppose I can always
improve the searchability of a post - especially a useful one! ;)

I do come to the group - just not as often as I would like. I have
obtained lots of help both directly, and info gleaned from Googling -
so when I can give back, I like too. Got more support here than I ever
did from Microsoft!

Thanks for the pointers.


Being so grateful to whatever-powers-that-be is natural after
successfully
bringing your Window's installation back from death.

However, the likelihood that someone else has got themselves into the
exact-same predicament is very unlikely.

What I would suggest to you, if you genuinely wanted to help others work
through similar potential catastrophes such as your case, would be to
keep
coming back to a newsgroup like this one.

If you have had a few experiences of getting yourself out of tight
corners,
you could well be able to give valuable advice to someone to help them
out
of similar situations.

If not, and you are just content with posting a genuine procedure for
getting out of a very specific situation, then here are a couple of
things
that might help make it more accessible.

It won't appear immediately, but your post on a usernet newsgroup will
eventually find it's way into the popular search-engine's databases. So
somewhere in your post you should specify an exacting description of who
the procedure is aimed at or what problem it will solve and what the
procedure will manage to accomplish. This will help anyone with the same
or
similar problem to be directed to read your item when they enter their
search-terms in google or the like.

Hoping this will be of some encouragement to you,

==

Cheers, Tim Meddick, Peckham, London. :-)




Newman said:
I recently had a trojan manage to infect my Master Boot Record.

Symptoms were slow internet access and constant browser hijacking.
None of the conventional methods detected this. I actually installed a
second hard disk and a temporary copy of Win7. Once that was done, I
scanned my XP disk (with the trojan completely inactive).

Once I discovered the trojan, I booted a Partition Wizard 5 CD and
repaired the MBR on the WinXP disk. A quick reboot and WinXP worked -
at first. Then WinXP told me I needed some updated. I went to install
them, and they all failed. Then I was prompted to reboot - which I
did. Windows did a BSOD on the shutdown and then auto rebooted -
resulting in a 0x0000007B (0xBA4CF524, 0xC0000034) BSOD taking about
disk curruption.

I booted back into Win7 and did a CHKDSK /F on the WinXP drive. Still
BSOD 7B. I booted a WinXP CD and tried to do a repair install - on
reboot BSOD 7B!

I Booted the WinXP CD again and went into the Repair Command Prompt. I
issued the FIXMBR, and rebooted. Windows came back to life! THEN I get
the stupiest message ever! When I try to log in, "Your version of
windows needs to be activated before you can log in. Do you want to
activate windows now?".

Of course I say "Yes", and it just hangs on the spot. waited 30 min,
no joy. Multiple reboots, no joy. And I Googled and got this process -
which WORKS!

Thought I would pass it along for reference:


PROBLEM SOLVED!

- Reboot the computer and press <F8> to get the boot menu.
- Boot into "Safe Mode with Command Prompt"
- At the command prompt, enter the command "Explorer"
- If all is well, at this point your desktop should appear.
- Reinstall IE8 from a USB stick making sure you uncheck the "download
updates".
- Reboot your computer
- When you try to log in, Windows will make the usual activation
complaint'
- Say "Yes", and wait. The activation screen will appear
- proceed through the activation process - YOU'RE DONE!

worked for me like a charm. Hope this helps someone!

:)
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
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