Serious problem

[Barbarossa]

Sara- what you're going thru is the perfect advertisement for Norton Ghost. I was
lucky, I installed it and copied my HD (on 18 cd's- took over an hour). Then I changed
the boot priority in the BIOS to CD.
As luck would have it my grandson downloaded some crap that f-upped everything.
I popped in the Ghost CD's (now 3 months old) and like magic I was back up, only
lacking the windows updates that were installed after I used Ghost.
I used a bit torrent download of Ghost but was so impressed I went out and bought
a copy. Now I copy the HD every 3 or 4 months, saving a lot of potential aggrivation
and frustration (as you experienced).

No, I think what you're both going through is the perfect advertisement to not letting kids use your computer...

Kids are stupid on computers, I have had to reinstall windows on my father-in-laws and my brother-in-laws PC's twice, because they always let their kids piss about on there



I'm surprised you had to change the boot priority, I assumed CD was default for everyone.. Oh well..

[sArA]

Thanks for your help guys.

I am definately going to use Ghost once I have everything re-installed. You know, I am so pissed off about it as the comp was working just how I liked it, and now it doesn't feel right anymore. I guess it will take a while to get things back.

As for the kids thing, I'm afraid that I am rather stuck with that one...both of mine use it a lot and we only have the one. My 9 year old son (probably the guilty party) has been extremely sweet about losing all his game saves and installs and I think he will be rather more careful in future. If this experience has shown him the need to be more cautious about what he does and which sites he downloads from, then all's good.

Boot schmoot, the bloody thing was not co-operating at all. I would love to know the name of the beastie that caused this trouble so I can warn you lot, but unfortunately it wasn't until after the reboot that the problems started.

Oh......one more thing....

AVG was the key to the disaster as it deleted the rundll.exe files that stopped me from accessing .exe programs. I rang them up and they were extremely snotty as I had the free version. They refused to help at all and said 'we only supply the free version on the understanding that users are technically savvy' cheeky bastards, I felt rather insulted by their attitude ...what I had to go through to sort it out goes way beyond the average user's ability imo....so be warned the free version could be more trouble than its worth.

I have now reinstalled symantec corp with full updates so all is well.

[Barbarossa]

Sorry, didn't mean to sound harsh

What you could do is create them their own login accounts, that don't have administration rights, and limit their ability to install new programs and modify the registry, etc.. maybe.

But as you say, after this latest scare, they might be more careful in future...

[orcutt989]

Running in safe mode now, still can't access my other programs


I am tempted to put in my winxp disk and try for a repair. What do you all think cos I don't want to make things worse

Why cant you just do that? I thought repairing Windows copies all of the system files from the CD and overwrites your old ones. Wouldnt that solve your problem?

[peat moss]

Running in safe mode now, still can't access my other programs


I am tempted to put in my winxp disk and try for a repair. What do you all think cos I don't want to make things worse

Why cant you just do that? I thought repairing Windows copies all of the system files from the CD and overwrites your old ones. Wouldnt that solve your problem?

Thats right then all she would have to do is update windows again . All the security packs , well worth a try .

[Master$hake]

it will look for bad files and replace only those that are corrupted the link I put on my last post gives you step by step directions with screenshots on how to do that, if this is a virus problem that is in the mbr or a bootsector virus your in trouble as this will not help.

Since this is a filesharing forum you might want to get your hands on a copy of Winternals it allows you to access an unbootable system by running windows off a cd and gives you all kinds of great tools to work out problems like this. Sad to say price tag is $2500 but like I said this is a file sharing forum. Also know as adminpack

[sArA]

Thats right then all she would have to do is update windows again . All the security packs , well worth a try .

I did, and that was when I got the blue screen of death....the repair also had trouble and kept popping up that it couldn't locate the .dll files so it actually made things worse as I lost a lot of stuff.

Meh.....its almost back to normal except I lost all my bloody favourites unless someone has a clever idea of how I can retrieve them.

I think all my updates are done now....thank fuck for broadband


Thanks to everyone who tried to help..

[Izagaia]

Why cant you just do that? I thought repairing Windows copies all of the system files from the CD and overwrites your old ones. Wouldnt that solve your problem?

Sort of. Not all the time...

At any rate, after a user updates their system to any of Microsoft's service packs, their previous install CD, IMO, virtually becomes useless. Or at least, nolonger a "safe" bet when used to repair system files. The system with the service pack installed would be looking for files as they are written for that particular service pack. The install CD, would likely contain older files that are not always or are nolonger useable. For instance, I do not believe you would want to use an XP w/SP1 install CD to repair a system that had service pack 2 installed upon it. In the end, I would try to hunt down or create a new XP install CD that has SP2 slipstreamed onto it. Then attempt repairing again utilizing that.

Just my two-cents on this. So please forgive izzy's ignorance here if I am "off-base" to the actual problem. I admit not reading the entire thread. But I hope this shedds some light.