Major Problem

[Hi Ho]

I have a freind that has a Dell computer. He asked me to come and try and fix it because he said it wasn't working right. Well he was right. First off, I have to say that he is a real dummy when it comes to computers. Now for what's wrong. It takes ten minutes to boot up.The taskbar does not show up. The only way I can open the start menu is to press tab twice and press enter. Then it shows up in the middle of the screen. There are about 40 startup items in MS Config. I disabled all but the necessary ones and nothing changed. On startup there are several errors about McAffee Virus Scan saying something is missing. When I try to open any program or even My Computer it will show up running in the task manager but nothing will show up on the screen. I cannot open any programs. Not even system restore. Same goes for safe mode. Nothing works in there either. I think there may be several viruses on there plus about 40 spyware programs but I cannot open any programs to get rid of them. He says he has some things on there that he does not want to lose. How can I help him get this thing to work again?

I don't have much for system specs but I do know the following:

2.0 GHz P4
Windows XP Home
512 MB RAM

[Sixpack]

You could try installing another bootable hard drive then set the other one to slave and see if you can retrieve the info he needs. Not sure but it might be worth a try.

[Hi Ho]

Also, I belive his computer only came with a recovery disk. Would I be able to install XP from that?

[Sixpack]

Yes. But he would lose all his data. It will restore the computer to the way it came out of the box.

[Hi Ho]

Now would it be possible that if I put the hard drive in my computer to recover the files that a virus could somehow spread to my computer? Even if I don't open eny infected files.

[Sixpack]

Thats a good question. Not sure. If it was me I would use a drive that I was not overly concerned about. Someone else may have better insight on the subject.

[Cricket]

Originally posted by Hi Ho Now would it be possible that if I put the hard drive in my computer to recover the files that a virus could somehow spread to my computer? Even if I don't open eny infected files.

I've saved files from other computers this way a bunch of times and it works fine. Just make sure your antivirus definition files are up to date. I normally use FProt (a DOS based antivirus program) to scan the infected drive before I connect it to my computer. I've never caught a virus using this method of file retrieval.

Cricket