Hard Drive Question

[Omega1358]

I have recently had some adware problems on my dell and now it doesnt want to work at all. When as i start the system it starts windows normaly but when it gets to the desktop there are no icons and my start menu is gone. I cant use any program in this state. Now i am new when it comes to computer but is there any way to wipe out the hard drive completly so i can reinstale everything and wipe the adware in the proccess. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ski]

See if it works ok in Safe mode(press and hold the F8 key during startup, and select Safe mode). If so, then run your antivirus and spyware removal programs there.
If no spyware removal programs are installed, and you cannot access the Internet with your system, then d/l Ad-aware and Spybot on another system, burn them to a CD, copy them from the CD to your system in Safe mode(a CD-ROM drive will work in Safe mode with Windows XP), and run them in Safe mode.

If that does not help, then in Safe mode do a system restore to a date when things were working ok.

If still no good, then press and hold the F8 key during startup, and select 'Last known good configuration'.

[Omega1358]

I used Adware for two months daily before this new problem and all it seemed to do was stop major problems for the past two months. also i tried windows xp system restore 5 times and all 5 times it faild to restore it. now i havent tried 'Last known good configuration' but i will try it.I was kind of hoping to just erase my hard drive and star new because i have everthing backed up. If 'last known good config' dosent work is there any way to erase or what ever its called to wipe out everthing on the hd and start new. thank you.

[nosefirst]

What OS do you have? What do you mean when you say "I can't use any program in this state?

[jayb1234]

What kind of windows disk, if any did Dell provide with the machine? If you didn't get any disk, you probably have a restore partition on the hard drive that you don't want to wipe unless it is the last resort.

[Omega1358]

My os is windows xp profesional and when i start the computer it gives me the window xp welcome screen then it goes to my desktop but i have no shorcuts or icons of any kind plus my start menu is not there and when i press the start button on my keyboard nothing happend. i can move my mouse but thats it in this state. what use to happen was i would have to start and restart my computer until i got start menu and everthing back normally. eventualy i had to do it more and more times till now it doesnt want to go back to normal nomatter how many times i restart. also before this i got blue screen of death a million times a day until i installed Adaware which made bsod happen less. it came with a OEM windows xp profesional disk that is purple and 3-5 blue disks that just have all the introdution programs that are all expired. 1 of them is a disk with drivers though i dont know if that helps me. can anyone recomend any hard drive wipe programs or techniques that if i can get in using safe mode i can use. as of right now the computer is useless in this state and i dont care if i have to reinstall windows and any other programs. thank you

[ski]

Does it run ok in Safe mode?
If so, then did you run an updated antivirus program?

[Spearball]

Looks like you got a virus there. If i were u i would just reinstall windows because it might not be easy to get rid of a virus like that completly. If you cant get inot safe mode use the windows xp cd to do a full format. Im not sure about any software.

[Omega1358]

I was able to run it in safe mode and so i tried another windows system restore. it said i failed but as soon as i closed the restore window everything reappeared. same as before. but that still is not good because it still is running slow and buggy. and i also tried to format my hard drive and it wouldnt let me do it. tried 5 times to format and erase and start over but no go. i will try to reinstall windows to fix as suggested. but what is bothering me is it wouldnt let me system restore or format my hard drive which i assume is the virus.

[glc]

You cannot format the hard drive from within Windows. You have to boot with the Windows CD to do that. You can only format non-system partitions in Windows.