Help win xp recovery help

[Ch3tan]

Hello, my friend has given me her laptop to attempt to fix. It's running XP and has been buggered by a virus. It will occasionally boot, but freeze after windows login, it blue-screens with a stop message if I attempt to go into safe-mode.

XP recovery console does not recognise the administrator password.

What are my options here? Been trying to find a boot CD that will let me get to a command prompt to run chkdsk and a few other basics. I'd rather not -reinstall as she has a lot of files that I cannot backup.

Answers on a postcard please!

 

[soze]

Can you not connect it to your machine to run the check disk and a few virus scans. 9 times out of 10 your machine is not really at risk as the virus does not get run up.

Other than that something like Hirens Boot CD has AV software and will let you run a check disk. Failing that a repair Install of XP which should leave all your friends data in tact and just install over the top.

 

[Ch3tan]

I will check out hirens boot cd, thanks, also looking at some password recovery options.

 

[MYstIC G]

Error message when you log on to Recovery Console in Windows XP: "The password is not valid"

Frankly though, I'd install over.

 

[Ch3tan]

Well I had offline NT password editor on a bootdisk already, so I used that to bypassthe recovery console password check... rebooting with the win xp boot disk now to see if it has worked................

edit:// yep, that worked a charm.

 

[Ch3tan]

Next problem - cleaning the virus, still can't boot into safe mode.

Every-time I try to install a virus scanner, or run a cleaner it crashes the program.

 

[nath]

Is data access the only reason not to wipe and reinstall? If so, have you tried booting from Ubuntu and copying all the data to an external drive/flash drive?

 

[Ch3tan]

Yep, sod it, it's more hassle than it is worth. Going to put win7 on it on a separate partition, back up the files and then delete the XP partition.

 

[Zenith.UK]

Get one of these...
Cables To Go Laptop Hard Drive Adapter IDE / EIDE adapter - 44 PIN IDC - F - 40 PIN IDC - M 4 PIN internal power - M - PC

Rip out the HDD from the laptop, hook it up to your PC, run the virus checker from there. If you can, backup the files in case you need to blitz the installation.

 

[soze]

SUPERAntiSpyware.com - SUPERAntiSpyware Portable Scanner

Try this its a portable app so does not need to install plus gives you a random name makes it harder for the virus to stop.

 

[Ch3tan]

yeah tried that soze, tried nearly every anti-spyware I could find, everything flopped. Not got my win7 install cd here so I just repaired XP for now. Hoping that things will run after it finishes.

 

[Ch3tan]

Gah, even a repair installation failed.

 

[MYstIC G]

You run a full disk check and repair on it C?

 

[Ch3tan]

Yep, it's being gay. Making a new partition for a new install of xp now, then I'll copy over the data.

 

[nath]

Waaaaaaait. Can't you just grab an Ubuntu boot disc and copy the data off that way? Alls ya need is a cd-r and external storage device.

 

[Gahn]

I would just dl this Malwarebytes.org (it saved my ass in the past), attach the "faulty" HD as secondary to your machine, chkdsk it, defrag it, run malware on it/backup files needed.
If it fails yet tbh just wtfpwn it with fresh installation with diskprep to erase the lot.

 

[Ch3tan]

too mcuh effort nath, no external storage here, don't need to waste a CD this way. I've got hirens boot cd, so I can easily create another parition for the data that needs keeping, and then simply install a fresh windows.

 

[nath]

Bleh, not the way I'd do things and so *clearly* utterly the wrong way.


But yeah, that'll work .