Oh noes, computer problems...

YodaTuna

Here's the deal, my stupid little brother loaded down his computer so badly with spyware and shit that now it won't even load windows. I also can't seem to get into safe mode. I'm having trouble locating my windows disc.

What are my options?

EclecticGroove

Pretty much, find the disk. If he hosed his machine that bad, even if you get it to boot it's probably not going to be pretty. Reinstall is the only option I can think of, unless it's a hardware failure that is.

Sir Red of the Manti

You could just try to boot into Safe Mode (smack F8 while comp is loading) and run MSConfig (Start -> Run -> MSConfig) to see and eliminate some of the stuff that might be bogging down windows while it's trying to load.

saltiness

Sir Red of the Manti wrote:

You could just try to boot into Safe Mode (smack F8 while comp is loading) and run MSConfig (Start -> Run -> MSConfig) to see and eliminate some of the stuff that might be bogging down windows while it's trying to load.

Read OP again.

Sir Red of the Manti

saltiness wrote:

Sir Red of the Manti wrote:

You could just try to boot into Safe Mode (smack F8 while comp is loading) and run MSConfig (Start -> Run -> MSConfig) to see and eliminate some of the stuff that might be bogging down windows while it's trying to load.

Read OP again.

Oh, didn't see that. I suppose attempting to boot the last working config probably didn't help much either, in which case you may be boned without a Windows CD.

EclecticGroove

Even with the windows disk the best he would manage would be a half assed repair that probably wouldn't do much of anything.

Like I said, not that it's impossible to get into Windows again, but unless there is stuff on the disk you MUST have and are unrecoverable, I'd say use this as a lesson learned on what not to do with a pc for your little brother.

If you must by all means get windows running again for some reason it will take a bit of elbow grease. Best bet, you need files, pop the disk out and put it in a nother pc to pull them off (or an external drive enclosure if you have one), then put it back and wipe it all out when you find the windows CD.

If you don't care if it's Windows per se, you can download a Linux distro and install that.
Upside is, it's a lot harder to bog a linux install in just by browsing online because most of the junk won't be able to install itself on a non windows OS. If he's doing nothing but e-mail, web, some writing, and IM, there are lots of good free apps out there for it.

Check out Ubuntu as a good place to start, and the setup is pretty painless.

Mmmm... Cocks...

You could always get one of those Linux discs that's bootable from the CD drive and just go into the HDD from there.

EclecticGroove

MateriaMaster wrote:

You could always get one of those Linux discs that's bootable from the CD drive and just go into the HDD from there.

Don't even need a linux distro for that, altho ubuntu will do that as well, but you can get something like a BartzPE disk that is essentially windowsXP running from a cd drive to do the same.