Please help!!

[integra]

Here's the lowdown. I downloaded some software yesterday which contained a virus. Norton alerted me to the virus and then everything ground to a halt. I tried restarting the computer but I only get as far as the XP loading screen then it restarts itself.

I phoned the manufacturer of my PC and they got me to use their recovery CD which is supposed to repair any corrupt files so I could get into XP again. It didn't do this for me. So they basically told me since it wasn't letting me repair that I would have to reinstall XP fresh and lose everything.

Unwillingly I went to format the drive so I could reinstall. It won't even let me do this! Says the drive is either too full or corrupt!!

Anyone know why this would be happening? And is there ANY way of getting some files off the PC before I finally manage to reinstall XP?

Thanks!

[Cricket]

Wow, what a mess.

If you have another computer available that's running WinXP or Win2000, you can install your hard drive into it as a secondary hard drive and then use Windows File Explorer to move the files to the other hard drive or burn them to CD.

Sounds like you got a boot sector virus. You might need to remove the partitions or just zero fill the whole drive in order to use it again.

Do you know which virus you got? Sounds like a real nasty one.

Cricket

[ktkendall]

Do you know how to try to boot into safe mode??

[integra]

Well I remember the virus had "handy" in it's name, so i'm assuming it's this one...

http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/defau...&virus_k=99881

Although it says this isn't such a bad virus?

And no, I don't know how to boot up in safe mode. Although when it gives me the options of "starting up from last known good settings" or "safe mode"....I've tried safe mode but all it does is displays a lot of lines of text on screen then eventually restarts itself.

I'll need to try your idea about using the second PC. Although I can't try that til I can get home to pick up my old PC next week or so.

Any other ideas would be much appreciated!

[ktkendall]

Obviously you do know how to boot to safe made and my other suggestion was the last known good config, but since you have tried those and did not work, try the next step suggested...

[glc]

Try booting with a real XP cd (not a restore or recovery disk), get it into the emergency repair console, and at the C prompt, type CHKDSK /R - other commands to try if this doesn't clear it up are FIXBOOT and FIXMBR.

[integra]

Where do I get hold of a real XP disc? Thanks.

[glc]

Call your machine manufacturer and ask them how to get into the repair console using what they provided you. If it can't be done, raise a stink.

[integra]

Thanks for that, but unfortunately it didnt work. It did some thins but now it won't even get to the XP loading screen!

thanks anyway. I've got myself a new hardrive so hopefully that'll work.