[razzledazzledown]

Hello,
I have Vista - Home Premium. I downloaded a DVD ripping program today and since then my computer has gone to [bleep]. I removed the program, but my computer immediately started malfunctioning. When I restarted, my computer will not open any programs except for Windows Explorer (and even this is not working so well).

When I click on any other program (Itunes, Word, AVG Free - my anti-virus software, Firefox, etc.), the following happens:
-- A window pops up that says Windows Installer....Preparing to Install _______ (Itunes, for example)
-- After a bit of time, it will say Please Wait While Windows Configures Itunes
-- I will wait, then it will tell me that something is unavailable. In the case of iTunes, it says QuickTime was not found. QuickTime is required to run Itunes. Please reinstall iTunes.

***Again, this is not just with Itunes....It is with every program I try to open. It will go to the installer for whatever the thing is, and then say that it cannot complete it. Or, nothing will happen at all....I will click on an icon and nothing will happen at all.

I do NOT know what to do. I already tried a System Restore from 9/26 (LONG before I installed this dumb DVD ripper program), and it did not work. Everything remained the same.

I have tried using Internet Explorer to re-download some of the programs, like Dell DataSafe Online Backup and AVG Free. It will start the download, get to 100%, and then say Internet Explorer Has Stopped Working.

I have a lot of valuable photos and music files on here that I would really like to save. If I do indeed need to reinstall the operating system, I need to figure out a way to save these files. PLEASE, someone help me. I am not very smart with computers so I need to be walked through everything, but pleaaase. I don't even know where to start.

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Do you remember the name of the DVD ripping program? It may not have completely uninstalled, and it's possible that it came bundled with some spyware.

[Jacee]

Do you remember the name of the DVD ripping program? It may not have completely uninstalled, and it's possible that it came bundled with some spyware.

[Cendyn Tech]

Hello,

I had a very similar problem but i was using Windows XP Pro instead of Vista.In my cases i found that the operating system files were corrupt. I tried to reinstall the system files which doesnt delete your files but this still did not work. The information on this particular computer belong to a VP in my company so i had to recover the data.
The first thing i did was to take the hard drive out of the computer. if you dont know how to do this there are tutorials online that will show how to do it. Next i used an IDE/SATA adapter to connect the harddrive i took out of the mulfuncting computer to another computer as a USB device. The adapter is only 25.00 buck so it's very cost affective. Once you connect the hard drive to another computer you can safety remove the files you need, after this is complete you can try and reformat the harddrive this should take care of any corrupt files you may have on the drive. I found the adapter at tigerdirect here's the link

http://www.tigerdire...e...&CatId=3770

I hope this helps and good luck i'm sure you will be able to get you data