I have read several past posts and reply's, and I still have a few questions. But first I will tell you from begining, what we are working with here.
I am working on a Dell E310. KEEP IN MIND This is an 80 gig HD with 60 gb as partition 1 for XP Home, and a 20 gb partition 2 that was empty from someone in the past.
They had it LOADED to the hilt with viruses, worms, trojens, you name it. They uninstalled my Anti Virus I installed. WHY? I have no idea.
After trying to remove hunreds and hundreds of spywares and virus just that accumilated over the past month with out virus protection, I found that I was still getting this page that would always pop up when going on line. Not a specific page, but random weird sites.
So I found a site where some one said to download SUPERAntiSpyware. So I did. After running it, it found an additional 181 items, which all looked to be really bad. Nothing looked like it might be important to the system, all were labeld to be some type of trojen, virus, malware etc.
I then quarentined and deleted all the items.
The computer was running ok, and didn't pop up that page anymore, so I decided to use my Auslogics Boost Speed, which I find to be a great tool.
I did my normal things cleaning the registry, never had problems before, cleaning of the hard drive same goes for that too with no issues in the past. I then found this other program I had not used on it before. Its called Auslogics Track eraser. When you open the program, it states this following message:
"When you surf the internet, open documents or run programs, your activity is recorded in files, cookies and the registry. Besides leaving a visable track of your activity, this data clutters and slows down your PC. Track eraser protects your privacy by removing this sensitive information from your computer".
I figured I would run that also in hopes to remove any possible tracers or cookies these viruses or trojens left behind. After I told it to fix the stuff, i noticed it had like 60,000 files plus and during its deletion, windows popped up saying something along the lines that some files had been changed and were needed to run windows correctly am I sure you want to change them.
I of course did not want to. As I kept hitting no, the program Auslogics was still running, so this made me believe it wasn't Auslogics doing this, otherwise you would think it would have paused while changing windows files.
(Sorry this is a long story, but I want you all to know exaclty from beging to end what happened)
So I continually pressed no, but to no avail would it let me do anything else, so I had to restart the computer, ( Iread somewhere this may have casued the issue at hand)
When I turned the computer back on, it came only to a blank screen after showing the typical dell screen with this following message:
" Windows could not start becuase the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please re-install a copy of the above file."
After scrambling online for over a day, I decided to do the following.
I installed XP Pro onto partition 2. I then copied the hal.dll file from another XP Home machine and then copied that file into the C:\windows\system32 file.
I then restarted the machine and then recieved the following error:
" Windows could not start becuase of an error in the software.
Please report this problem as:
Load needed DLLs for kernel
Please contact your support person to report this problem."
I have read a bit on the dell recovery partition which I dont fully understand, but I think I could do it. But I do have a question.
Will any of these methods that anyone suggest lose exsisting data?
It is imparetive I dont lose all thier files.
Here are some answers to presumed questions later.
I do not have a OEM Cd for this mahine as it did not come with one.
I do not have means to copy this data to a back up drive as this is a dell and I can not take the drive out, I dont have any connections that would hook up to the dell drive as it is weird looking both the info cord and the power cord.
I do not have an external HD
Here are some aditional questions.
(some may not agree with this question, but pease understand)
Can I download an xp home cd and use it specifically for repair, or will it not work becuase its not the original?
When installing an OS on a dell, is there anything extra I should know, I have heard its not the same, like the audio drivers have to be the first thing installed otherwise audio does not work.?
Is there anything in general I should understand about this dell?
THANK YOU so much for any help.
I know these are some seriously technical questions, and I do understand I am lucky to get any answers.
Thanks again.
PLease feel free to ask me any other questions, I will get back quickly
Or email me at u.f.o.electro @ gmail.com
Edited by need more info, 03 May 2008 - 06:54 PM.
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