[help] Serious XP Home problems and threat of death.

Hi Ladies and Gentlemen, I exagirate slightly but I believe that I have messed up my Friend's Acer, 2.80 Celeron Laptop.

The trouble started when she got a virus, so she reinstalled it, then I said I'd but some anti-spyware on it, which was when the trouble started, Ad-Aware (being as hardcore as it is) decided to delete some pretty important windows files, none that made it start up but enough to stop it working properly, so I decided to try and help by recovering the system (since Acer only gave her recovery Disc, would have helped if they gave her an actual XP Disc, but nooooo had to be some crappy recovery disc) anyway I went through the recovery, stopped some of the services, changed some security settings (to make it more secure, I'm big on security) Then installed XP SP2 (Maybe another mistake. Turned off system restore, deleted the unistall files for SP2 (I'll understand if someone calls me an idiot here, just I like to save space). Then I tried to install Microsoft Works 2004, which didn't work because the Windows Install service was stopped (So I restarted that) and continued with the install. Next I tried to install the SpeedTouch 500 Modem for BT Business Broadband and got this error message:

Cannot start Installshield (iKernal.exe) .......

RPC Server is not avaliable.

(Totally stumped there)

and also, when I try to start the defragmenter either from cli or gui I cannot get it to work and I get this message:

Cannot conect to Windows Defragmenter Engine

(There too)

If anyone could help I would really appreciate it as I so desperatly do not want to loose her as a friend, because she is the only one in this house that has been so understanding and helpful to me.

#231001

You've probably disabled one too many services.

Start turning things back on again... and Ad-Aware will not remove windows system files. The trojan or virus more than likely had something to do with it.

Remember, just because you re-install doesn't mean the bug is gone.

Some like to camp out in the boot sector. So if you didn't completely reformat the drive before the reload, it's probably still there.

#231003

Thing is, I have no idea how to reformat with those usless recovery discs. I thought about using a boot disc and then formatting it but I don't know if Win XP Pro boot discs are compatible with Win XP Home for one and two would a recovery disc actually work or would I have to get a proper install disc?

Thank you very much.

#231016

Home and Pro use the same filesystem and are compatible.

The recovery disks should be bootable and are usualy all that is needed to restore the system to the original factory load.

So once the format is finished, boot to the recovery disk and follow the instructions.

Verify the recovery disk is bootable BEFORE you reformat just to be safe.

#231035

Thank you so much man, will a USB Floppy drive work or will I have to make a bootable CD for the boot disc?

Thank you very very much for this

#231042

You better make a bootable CD to boot the pc as I know you can't boot with a USB device, correct me if I'm wrong

#231047

Depends on the system... some have built in support for USB devices so you can boot to them.

Most do not.

You would have to go through the Bios or look in the owners manual to see if it does.

#231050

those recovery discs (that you're afraid of) usually revert the computer back to the state it was when the system was purchased. smelling clothes-line fresh out of the laundry... you usually don't need to do too much with them, pop 'em into the cd drive and boot the pc. they format the h.d. and then re-install the o.s. and apps. they suck in my opinion, because usually they install things that you probably didn't want the first time you got the pc... that beats, though, a dead pc.

#231060

i think you can. if you can boot linux from a usb drive, you can boot anything then. depends on the motherboard though.

i'd recommend backing up all the nessary files like homework, and then reformatting the drive. instal these things as soon as you can get online. spybot search and destroy, adaware se, any antivirus program (i'd recommend avast because it's more convenient than avg even though it's not as good), a firewall (zonealarm is free) and that's all. it protects you computer securly.

#231137

Thank you so much to all of you for your kind kind help.

I will never forget this.

-James

#231216