Mt Whitney Zone Forums The Chat Room Computer question

I know this is totally non-Whitney (but this IS the chat room). Can I create a boot disc on a laptop running Vista to use to boot up an infected PC running XP so I don't trigger whatever virus executable is in the infected PC's startup?

Any suggestions are welcome.

Our PC is infected with one of those nasties that incapacitates any antivirus software you have on your system, and doesn't allow you to delete certain files associated with the virus. It even shut down a new antivirus program that I tried to download and run.

CaT

I've only disinfected an XP computer once, so I'm no expert.

The guy here who helps students with infected machines couldn't work on mine, since I'm in Fresno, and he's in SF. So he directed me to UBCD4WIN. It's a web site and message board of people who work on or help people do what you need to do.

Here's the thread where I sought help and reported my results:  Newbie questions: Vista, Burning, Slipstream   Read my last post in that thread.

I first had to find the system disk for an XP (I think), and use that along with software from UBCD4WIN = "Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows" to create a clean boot disk with some utilities to clean the virus off the system. (I created the boot CD using my Vista laptop.)

But the process also involved downloading, installing and running several virus cleanup programs, too. And even then, they did not clean off the virus -- it was a step ahead of the latest software.

So then I found a forum where someone told another person how to do a HijackThis. It takes a snapshot of all the programs running in the system.

Anyway, I was able to then identify the odd several virus files that were still hiding on the computer and remove them.

Sorry, it's been several years since I did that, so I don't recall everything very well. But it was a very tedious and time consuming process, and I did it sort of for the experience, or maybe because I'm a masochist. You might want to take it into a computer repair shop and let them deal with it.

And IF you don't have any valuable files on it, let them just clean off the hard drive and re-install XP. That would be the easiest repair.

Good luck!

Boot into DOS, copy the files to some other place, format, reinstall. Make a copy of Bart's Preinstalled Environment even if you have a healthy system. Test it, then you will be ready for the inevitable.

Thank you both. I'm about to the place where we're probably just going to back up any data files of value, clean off the drive and reinstall XP from scratch. It would be good to do this because there's a lot of extra stuff on the drive that has accumulated over the years that doesn't really need to be on there any more. Thanks again for the suggestions.

CaT

I had a nasty malware on my mother-in-law's computer a couple of weeks ago (Google redirect and some sort of other error I now forget). I tried AVG scan & Malwarebytes with no luck. I had the XP reinstall sitting on my desk ready to just wipe it and start over. As a last resort, I tried ComboFix. They recommend using it in conjunction with any of the several malware/virus sites that will review your scan logs, but I just ran it, figuring I had nothing to lose. Voila! It worked. Found a rootkit and another virus the others had overlooked.

On the other hand, if I'd just done a reinstall at the beginning, I would have saved a couple of days of effort... .

g.

Thanks, George.
"A couple of days of effort" is probably what it will take me to to an XP reinstall.

CaT

Com'on, a couple of days for a reinstall. ;D

I had a bad install of Win 7 over Vista and after of days of trying to figure it out with techs from Microsoft and HP, I did a clean install. It only took be 6 hour to have the system back to its former state minus all the crap preinstalled software.

Thank God for broadband. I've done this a few times during the bad old days of dial-up.

I'm including identifying and backing up any data files in that "couple of days". And actually, I've already been working on that all weekend, and still am working on it. The actually "clean and reinstall" probably won't take longer than a few hours (if all goes well). But with me, "if all goes well" is almost never the case. Inevitably something unexpected comes up that prolongs or complicates things. It just happens. It's why I rarely attempt to fix anything more complicated than screwing in a new light bulbs or replacing batteries.

CaT

I am right there with you CaT...lol