My desktop won't come up

[trucanadian]

My brother recently downloaded a virus, and although the OS (vista) boots up just fine, once i enter the pass to log in the screen turns black and nothing ever happens. I have tried logging in on numerous accounts. I have tried logging in through safe mode. The difference is in safe mode, once i log in, 5 mins later it returns back to the login screen without ever showing the desktop. I have tried safe mode +cmd prompt option but command prompt does not show up (until you log in i presume). If someone does know how to fix this virus, that would be great, but i don't expect it to be fixable. I do not have a backup disk. I do have have a recovery disk but it looks like the only option it has is a destructive recovery (where all files are deleted), which i would highly prefer not to do. So if the virus cannot be fixed, i was hoping that i would somehow be able to get rid of the login screen/username screen somehow and then hopefully i'll be able to log on fine that one time? Is this possible to do without loging in? Another idea i had was hopefully if i could get command prompt running somehow without logging in then transfer the files i need to transfer to an external hard drive.

Does anyone have an solutions here i would just like to try and get a few files off the hard drive somehow.

Any help appreciated

Thanks.

[glc]

I think your best bet is remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer with a USB adapter to scan it for viruses and recover your files.

http://www.pcmech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=204050

[trucanadian]

yeah i thought of that too but the only thing is i don't want to make a mistake and break something or somehow mess the hard drive connection up. Plus i don't really have a way to connect the hard drive in that computer to anything else.

[mikeL]

Here's a link to the USB adapter that glc mentioned: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2020&cat=HDD

Here a link about using the USB adapter: http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?t=204049

As for removing a hard drive it's pretty straight forward, and had to mess up / break something unless you use a hammer

The only connections will be the power connector, and data cable, this either being IDE a 40 or 80 wire ribbon cable, or a SATA connector. If it is a IDE cable note where the red colored wire plugs in, it is usually facing the power connector, as for SATA it will only plug in one way, as will the power connector. The drive itself is held in the computer either by 4 screws, or some type of mechanical lock.