[carllan]

Help!..

My son's computer got infected by a virus.
When you reboot the computer the following happens:
1. The dell screen comes with the BIOS verison.
2. A request for a password appears. I type in the passowrd and its accepted.
3. The blue screen with the windows logo appears but nothing happens.

--Reboot using Windows XP system CD

I tried booting from the cd (after changing boot sequence ). Steps 1 and 2 happen but then I receive
"Alert! OS install mode. Amount of available memory is limited to 256MB.
press F1 to reboot, F2 for setup utility.

Pressing F1 doesn't do anything.
Pressing F2 does allow me to view setup.

System -
Dell Dimension 4600
XP Windows SP1 CD-ROM
BIOS version A10.
Pentium 4 2.80 processor


Any help that someone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

Carllan

[achilles becqx]

Hi,
Format the hard drive using any disk manager or do a low level format of the hard drive...u can use amidiag or any other disk manager do that.
sometimes the image of the operating system gets saved into the hard drive and thats why it is not allowing u to reinstall the operating system!!!

[wannabe1]

Please...Do Not Format just yet...

Let's let a few more techs look at this first...

wannabe1

[peterm]

I agree with Wannabe1 DO NOT reformat.
What steps did you take to get rid of the virus - this will let us know what
might have been mucked up.

[carllan]

Thank you all for the quick response.


Type of virus

It was a bloodhound. Initially the system would come up but without any desktop icons. He could access the task manager and burn his music files from the hard drive to cd's. When he finally told me about the problems it was too late. The computer had already reach the condition that I listed.

Some additional info.
- As the computer is loading, I can not select F2 for setup. It goes right into the request for the password.

[wannabe1]

Do you have a Startup disk set? (floppies)

[peterm]

as soon as you start the machine start tapping the F8 Key does this give you the option to select safe mode or last known good configiration.
If yes pick last good gonfig.

[carllan]

wannabe1, on Feb 11 2006, 09:31 PM, said:

Do you have a Startup disk set? (floppies)

I have the startup disks. Everything works until I use Disk #4. After reading disk #4, I receive a "hpn.sys is corrupt ". I tried to reboot but same error appears after reading disk #4.

[carllan]

peterm, on Feb 13 2006, 05:55 AM, said:

as soon as you start the machine start tapping the F8 Key does this give you the option to select safe mode or last known good configiration.
If yes pick last good gonfig.

I will try this tonight. I tried safe mode earler before asking for help but it wouldn't come up in the safe mode. I would see the safe mode on the screen but I couldn't do anything wiith it.

[The Skeptic]

You can take off the disk from your son's computer and install it as a slave in your computer. While there, you can apply a whole lot of antimalware programs. Also, run chkdsk, disk cleanup, defragmenter etc.