[Hardluck Hank]

First of all I have an HP a362n running Win XP Home Ed.

While trying to solve some malware probs Thursday (prior to finding this site), I was trying to get to get to safe mode, but by accident I hit F10 instead of F8. This causes a system restore. At first I wasn't too worried as I expected to eventually see the Windows system restore screen and I had read where sometimes restoring prior to the intoduction of the malware solved the problem. However the F10 casues a system restore from the partition on the HD taking it back to Day 1 (about 1.5 years ago). Now I have a myriad of probs. Not only that but it didn't solve all the malware bugs (but it did some of them). I'm still addressing those in the corresponding malware forums.

My main prob I wish to address here is dealing with drive assignments. Whenever I access a program and try to do a "File Save As" or try to download a file from the internet and do a "Save As" the respective program freezes. It will however allow me to download and execute (install) programs directly.

I believe this has something to do (not sure tho) with the fact that prior to the system restore, my last save was to the last drive letter (O) which at that time was a partition of my secondary HD. After the restore all the drive letters are switched, and O now points to a removable drive.

In any case, I now can't save files directly from programs or save one via downloading. Even "Extract" in Winzip hangs up the same way. Also whenever I open Explorer, it take several seconds to list the drives, although it eventually displays them.

I need to solve this problem first I think, before I will be able to download some of the proggies I need to get at the malware.

I definitely would appreciate any help and/or advice that you may be able to provide. TIA.

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Has this removed the undo restore function

[Retired Tech]

Has this removed the undo restore function

[Hardluck Hank]

I'm not sure what you mean. I wasn't aware there was an undo restore function. How do I determine if there is one?

[Retired Tech]

Click start then help and support then undo changes with system restore, when you do a system restore, it gives the option of undoing recent restore if it does not fix it

Edited by Keith, 14 May 2005 - 07:04 PM.

[Hardluck Hank]

No can do Keith. This was not your basic system restore via windows. It did the restore from the special devoted partion on the HD where it uncompressed files and restored from scratch. There now is no history record (as least prior to Thursday) to restrore back to. There doesn't appear to be an undo option.

Now for some good news (finally). Somehow, someway I seemed to have gotten past the "Save As" problem and now have it pointing to a directoy on C drive. At least I can save programs and to downloads now. I would still like to get an answer on this one in case it shows up again tho.

Next question - Evidently I am going to have to reinstall most of my main proggies. A real pain in the butt, but compared to the malware probs and the download problem, it seems less of a nuicense.

However, when I go to the Windows remove programs app in the control panel, the only ones listed are the ones resident when the original save partition was created. Is it safe just to delete the folders where the programs are located in Program Files, or is there some other method to delete the previous software since they can't be removed via the normal method?

[Retired Tech]

Open the folders as it may contain the programme and you could only need to click set up, if you have all the software, you could install a small programme to see if it overwrites or duplicates.

You should get away with deleting the folders for anything which is not part of XP