I am running a 3.0ghz Pentium 4 with Windows XP Pro.
To make a long and frustrating story short, yesterday my computer became infected with a host of bad malware and adware like SurfSideKick, search-paga, cool web search, and I think a few others. I looked online for cleaning tutorials, and followed the directions, and seemed to be making some progress. But when I followed one of the cleaning software's instructions and restarted my computer, that's where the real trouble started.
Soon it claimed that NTDETECT had failed. So I read up on how to get around that, and followed some online instructions, but no go. My computer wouldn't boot through, but was instead caught in some kind of loop. So I did the only sensible thing I could (which may have been, in reality, really dumb) and reinstalled windows.
Now I can start my computer (which is an improvement), but it will not recognize any hard drive other than C:. It doesn't even recognize the smaller portion of C: I had partitioned off. I have two other hard drives, but my computer doesn't recognize either. Shortcut folders pointing to those drives in my old windows profile from my previous defunct installation also do not work. Is there anything I can do to force the computer to recognize those hard disk drives?
Additionally, I cannot connect to my home network. When I try to run ipconfig from my command prompt, the response is merely a line stating "Windows IP Configuration". I cannot create a new connection, and none of the connection wizards are solving my problem.
I have run adaware and detected nothing since reinstalling my computer, when previously there were several problems that adaware couldn't fix. Additionally, specific scanners like cool web shredder have also come up clean. As for Hijackthis, my computer can't connect to the internet, so I don't know how to post the log. That's okay though, because it's really short, with only three entries. One is my Nvidia drivers which I just reinstalled, the other two are Hijackthis and HijackThis (yes, with different caps on the T).
I'm sorry for the vagueness of this post. I am not really a computer person. If there is anything I can clarify to improve my chances that someone here can help, please let me know what kind of information you need and I'll do my best to find it.
Thanks again for your attention. I hope someone out there can get me out of this mess.
Sign In
Create Account
