Computer in rough shape (virus)

Suckafish

I have my Aunt's computer with me and told her I would do what I could to make it functional again. I'm looking for the best plan of attack, and trying to get her up and running again for the lowest cost possible. This is what I know so far.

- system could dual boot into Windows 98 and 2000. After booting into 2000 the system would shut down within five minutes. The files she would like to recover are on the 2000 partition.

- she was told there is a virus on the hard-drive by some IT guy at her work. One of them installed avast and did a boot-time scan. Some files were quarantined which should not have been, and now the computer will only boot into Windows 98. For 2000 it starts to load and then the video signal is lost.

- the optical drive does not work, and she either does not own or could not find her OS/restore disk. She thinks the operating systems are legit, so I have no reason to believe otherwise.

My first thought was to try to restore the files quarantined by avast, boot 2000 into safe mode, and run every virus and adware scan I can find. My search so far has come up empty though - no idea if it is possible to restore these files without being to boot into the OS where avast is installed.

Suggestions?

lowlylowlycook

Suckafish wrote: »

I have my Aunt's computer with me and told her I would do what I could to make it functional again. I'm looking for the best plan of attack, and trying to get her up and running again for the lowest cost possible. This is what I know so far.

- system could dual boot into Windows 98 and 2000. After booting into 2000 the system would shut down within five minutes. The files she would like to recover are on the 2000 partition.

- she was told there is a virus on the hard-drive by some IT guy at her work. One of them installed avast and did a boot-time scan. Some files were quarantined which should not have been, and now the computer will only boot into Windows 98. For 2000 it starts to load and then the video signal is lost.

- the optical drive does not work, and she either does not own or could not find her OS/restore disk. She thinks the operating systems are legit, so I have no reason to believe otherwise.

My first thought was to try to restore the files quarantined by avast, boot 2000 into safe mode, and run every virus and adware scan I can find. My search so far has come up empty though - no idea if it is possible to restore these files without being to boot into the OS where avast is installed.

Suggestions?

The first thing I would do is hook that HD to another computer and copy the files yor Aunt wants preserved. After that I would be tempted to just reformat and install whatever OS you care to. Assuming she is willing to spend money on a new OS.

Evil_Reaver

I thought about what you wrote for a while before typing this trying to come up with a solution that was doable, but I think you're shit out of luck as far as saving this machine is concerned. If I were you, I'd pull out the drive and connect it to another machine so you can recover the files she needs. After that, recommend she get a new computer. She can get a brand new Dell running Vista for under $400 (US), which isn't much in the grand scheme of things.

Windows 98 and 2000 aren't even supported by Microsoft anymore. What this comes down to is that if someone were to create an exploit for 98 or 2000 that completely killed either OS, Microsoft isn't going to help you, nor will they patch the problem.

Additionally, there is no other way to get rid of a virus other than a reformat/reinstall. Even if you do "clean up" the files that the virus touched, you don't know what holes in your security the virus left behind.

Your aunt needs to protect herself and her data by getting with the times and upgrading to a better OS and learning best practices for computing on the intertron.

Suckafish

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I managed to get the computer up and limping again, and can use a flash drive to pull off the files she would like to keep. I'll look into either getting a copy of XP to install on this machine, or suggest she get a new system.

JPArbiter

Yeah, In all honesty since she is using 98/2000 I would have politly informed her those files wer corrupted beyond redemtion and wiped the damn thing. I had to do that to Mrs Arbiters windows machine (seh just had to download every single uncreative furry picture she came across) and ended up loosing something like 8 gigs of artwork.

Upgraded her to XP, installed firewalls and top of the line virus killers. it happened again.

we got her a macbook, and she stopped saving pictures. this old computer is now used as a Game machine (or will be as soon as I can upgrade the processor)

Chake99

If you don't want to spend money: linux! : http://www.kubuntu.org/download.php

It works fairly well on older systems, and there is no chance of getting viruses.