Before I 'nuke and pave'......

[Panama Red]

I'll ask for some other's thoughts. Working on a Dell Dimension 4500 with XP installed, 5 user logins. Got it because it had been "getting slower and slower and this morning it wouldn't even start up". I was able to start in Safe mode and run a Housecall scan. Removed 112 infected files. Ran Adaware, Spybot, Hijack This! found some more nasties. Boots fine to the User Log in screen, but select any user and it only boots to the desktop picture - no task bar, icons - nothing. Restore had been turned off, so that's not an option. Pulled the hard drive, installed it in my machine and saved all the personal documents/pictures, etc. Tried a repair/install with the Dell XP disk. It gets to "Installing Devices" with 34 minutes to go showing and just hangs. The activity bar in the bottom right contiues to cycle and the XP propaganda keeps cycling on the screen, but that's as far as it goes. Any ideas before I wipe it clean? I suspect the virus removal damaged the registry or some necessary files.

[glc]

I'd cut the customer's losses and nuke/pave - with a zero fill first.

[Panama Red]

Thanx, g. We're on the same page!

[Panama Red]

Just a quick update for those who read this later. Rather than wipe out all the customer's accumulated data, including his data base of insurance clients, I suggested installing a new hard drive and loading XP on it along with a more restricted installation of programs. Games will be moved to a machine dedicated to gaming rather than integrated with his business files. Less chance of his kids' gaming causing a problem. He liked the idea. Delivered it today along with the old drive installed as a slave. Now they can transfer all the data files they want to keep. Plus, I received email instructions from his Insurance Software company on how to transfer his data base. The performance increase by going from a 2mb cache hdd to an 8mb cache is a bonus. Very happy customer!