Posted: 12/26/2006 3:54:41 PM EDT
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I have a computer that's about 5 years old and it appears to be completely ate up with adware, spyware and possibly a virus or trojan called "qoolaid". I don't really use the computer much anymore but it has a lot of photo's and files on it that I'd like to be able to copy onto a cd. I can't get it to do much of anything and it won't let me open my cd burning software due to limited resources caused by the bugs. I booted in safe mode and ran adaware but it locked up prior to finishing. I ran spybot which said it fixed a few problems but I can't see any improvements in the performance. I ran McAfee virus scan in safe mode and it detected 10 files hat were either infected or possibly unwanted software but when I tried to delete, clean or quarantine them, it told me the file was write protected and couldn't be deleted, cleaned or quarantined. All of the infected files are in the "_restore" directory. Is there anything I can do to get rid of this crap long enough for me to retrieve my files before I use this thing as a target? Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm not terribly knowledgeable about these things unfortunately. |
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what o/s? if it is windows xp, delete the restore points by disabling "system restore" right click "my computer" properties system restore tab check "turn off system restore" this effectively deletes the system restore data. alternatively, you can take the hard drive out of that machine and slave it to another computer for data extraction. you can also put the hdd into an external enclosure and use it as a portable hard drive. |
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Guess I shoulda mentioned that. It's running Windows Me... If I were to take out the HD and slave it to another machine only for the purpose of extracting the data I want, what are the chances of infecting the other machine with whatever in the hell's got mine so fried? I'm basically only wanting to get my pictures, videos and a few Word documents out. |
Very little - as long as you FIRST run a scan and clean the drive from the new machine, and then ensure you have a solid real time scaning antivirus as you copy the good stuff over. |
You can always re-install a new OS in a new directory on that machine.... just to pull the data off.... if cleaning it or moving a drive is too much hassle. Just choose the "leave intact" option on the format screen. |
Doesnt have to be the same OS as was on it. You can install ME, Win98, Win2K, Xp, etc... assuming it is a FAT32 partition, which it should be. You can even use XP media and an existing code you have for another machine.... just dont activate it - use it for the 30 day temp period to get your data off. Dont do an "upgrade" do a new install, and instead of the default "C:\windows" just install to C:\wintemp or something like that. This is called a parallel install. |