Adaware killed my friend's computer (won't start windows) - need help soon!

[The Pentium Guy]

Nope . He actually wants to build a PC so that he can learn stuff.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Just in case anyone wants to know what he said: "some vector or something cannot be reached" and it asks him "ignore, retry, fail"

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Alright I've talked to him. It seems as though his dad is extremely mad at me because he had some office documents in there that he needed.

How's this?

Hey James,
I'm really sorry about what happened to your computer. And I didn't
meant to cause any damage or harm on purpose. However I do beleive
that I can help you get your files back.

Again the problem started when I suggested that you install AdAware
to remove any spyware/malicious programs that your computer might have
had. When you did the scan, several "dangerous files" (or so AdAware
calls them) were quarantined, and something got corrupted in the
Operating System

To Mr. Higgins:
Mr. Higgins, I'm extremely sorry for any damage I've caused to your
computer. James informed me that you had some important documents in
there that you need. Please accept my utmost apologies.

I've talked to several people and posted on several message boards
regarding how to deal with this situation. The majority of the asnwers
I received back was that the Operating System was infested with
spyware, that AdAware may have taken a part of the OS out with it when
quarantining.

I do feel that I can help regarding this matter, but please
disregard this advice if you wish to. I understand the feelings that
you may have toward me because of what happened.

I have some proposed solutions (which you can try if you wish). Please
look them over if you wish to.

1) Boot up into Safe Mode (hit F8 when "Windows 95" loading screen
comes up) and run AdAware, and unquarantine the quarantined files.
Then try rebooting into Windows 95 and see if that works.

2) If this doesn't work, then try booting to safe mode and
uninstalling AdAware from there.

3) If safe mode didn't work, then I think that the OS is completely corrupted.

I think the first priority is to rescue the important documents.
Easiest way to rescue the files would be to put the harddrive (in
Slave Mode) in another computer that works and copy the files there.
But keep in mind that the existing drive may have viruses and you may
be transferring viruses into the other computer so be sure you're
running a virus scanner while you do this.

Here's what I think the configuration would look like
PRIMARY_IDE:
Master = Existing Harddrive (on the working computer)
Slave = Harddrive (from the broken computer)

SECONDARY_IDE
Master - Existing CD/DVD Drive
Slave - Existing CD/DVD burner

4) Once you copy your files into the other harddrive, I would
reinstall Windows (95, 98, or 2000) on the harddrive (from the broken
computer) and then put it back into the computer*.

*I don't think the problem is hardware related, so I do beleive a
reformatting of the OS can solve this issue.

Please accept my utmost apologies Mr. Higgins. Again, I'm sorry for
any damage which I might have caused (directly or indirectly).

James, I hope to hear back from you.

Sound good? I mean his parents are really mad at me, because they had some seriously important office documents.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[lxskllr]

That sounds pretty good.

I wouldn't beat yourself up to badly over the situation though. The friends father should be mad at himself for letting his computer get to the stage it's in now. It would be the same as you coughing up blood for 2 years before going to the doctor, and then getting pissed at him when he tells you you have advanced cancer.

I hope that this doesn't affect your friendship, but it may be the best thing that happened to them if they'll learn from the experience, and begin to take a proactive approach to computer maintainence.

 

[Varun]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
That sounds pretty good.

I wouldn't beat yourself up to badly over the situation though. The friends father should be mad at himself for letting his computer get to the stage it's in now. It would be the same as you coughing up blood for 2 years before going to the doctor, and then getting pissed at him when he tells you you have advanced cancer.

I hope that this doesn't affect your friendship, but it may be the best thing that happened to them if they'll learn from the experience, and begin to take a proactive approach to computer maintainence.

I agree - it is a tough lesson to learn for most people, however if you have something you "can't lose" you don't keep it on your hard drive. You always back up important data.

I mean no one (well not no one but almost no one) keeps all of their money at home - they keep it in the bank. If you have items that you can't lose you keep them in a saftey deposit box, not under your bed. Data is no different. After reading this thread, it really does sound like you can just slave the drive in another computer and recover any files, so we all hope there is no harm done. If Dad learns to back important data up, I think he is better off. Imagine what would have happened if this was a hardware fault like the HDD dieing, and not just a software thing?

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Imagine what would have happened if this was a hardware fault like the HDD dieing, and not just a software thing?

That taught me a lesson. Now I'm backing up all those programs I've been working on (and that 3D RPG I've been working on for a full year) because ... well, my Maxtor is starting to make clicking noises >_<.

Thank you all for your advice. I'll update you once the matter is sorted out.

 

[Jeff7]

Win95 and FAT16/32 do have some benefits, namely the simple ability to get to a command line and work on the hard drive. Easy way to disable Adaware - boot to DOS, and either rename or delete Adaware's folder in Program Files\Lavasoft. It won't be able to load any of its files if it can't find them.


Funny thing, I know a family who has a similar system - old thing with Win98SE, a 400MHz processor, 64MB of RAM. Damn thing takes about a half hour to do just a Smart Scan with Adaware. They want to put WinXP on there. I tell them to get a new computer. It's not like they are lacking in money. Everyone in the household able to drive owns a car, and not old things. It's a well-to-do neighborhood, and their house is on par with the rest there. They also have a swimming pool. These people definitely have considerably higher income that the house I live in, and I alone own two PCs with CPUs over 2GHz.
They spend money on everything else, but the computer is almost like sacred property - keep fixing it until it utterly and completely dies.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Now that, is an insane idea!
"rename C:\Program Files\Lavasoft LavaSucks "

Sound good?

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
Now that, is an insane idea!
"rename C:\Program Files\Lavasoft LavaSucks "

Sound good?

Psh, Lavasoft doesn't suck. The PC it's trying to work on does.

So what exactly was the deal? Did he actually get rid of any spyware, or did he merely install Adaware?

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Psh, Lavasoft doesn't suck. The PC it's trying to work on does.

This would make him feel better though . Btw, "Safe Mode with Command Propmt" would get him into DOS right? Or should I just get him to make a DOS boot disk

So what exactly was the deal? Did he actually get rid of any spyware, or did he merely install Adaware?

Oh. Sorry, I should have explained a little more clearer. He installed adaware all fine. He scanned and quarantined stuff (apparently there was a LOT). Then he did an update and scanned again.....this time, after he quarantined, his computer went a lot slower (which is weird, considering it's slow enough already)....and then he got an error (he wasn't sure what it was), it crashed, and he couldn't boot up windows properly again.

A slight update though (not sure if I mentioned this earlier): He notified me that Safe Mode wouldn't work, he tried already.

Thanks.

 

[Jeff7]

Win95 you said? Option #6 is for the plain old Command Prompt. I think option 5 is command prompt only - no autoexec.bat or anything.



Ah, ok. Ripping out some of the adware/spyware probably damaged the registry.

I don't remember if Win95 has anything for registry repair. Other option is the system.da0 and user.da0 files.
Type in:
path=c:\windows\commands
cd\windows\system
attrib -s -r -h system.dat
attrib -s -r -h user.dat
attrib -s -r -h system.da0
attrib -s -r -h user.da0
erase system.dat
erase user.dat
ren system.da0 system.dat
ren user.da0 user.dat

That'll restore the backup registry files. You might need to do attrib +s +h to those files, I don't remember though - that whole bit there was from memory.
You might want to back up the system.* and user.* files first though.

If the .da0 files still have the spyware pointers in them, but the spyware files themselves are gone, it'll just waste a bit of time trying to load nonexistant programs. To clear that stuff out, get Crap Cleaner and run its registry scanner (they call it "Issues"). Hopefully that'll help.

Other thing to do - hook their hard drive up to your system, burn their important files to a CD, and then maybe reinstall Windows. Severe damage to the registry is tough to repair, if not impossible.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

Win95 you said? Option #6 is for the plain old Command Prompt. I think option 5 is command prompt only - no autoexec.bat or anything.

Great . I'll keep that in mind.

I don't remember if Win95 has anything for registry repair. Other option is the system.da0 and user.da0 files.
Type in:
<Clipped>
Other thing to do - hook their hard drive up to your system, burn their important files to a CD, and then maybe reinstall Windows.

I do beleive that a Windows reinstall session is the best solution, after backing up the files. I don't think repairing the registry will help in this case, honestly, it's nearly 10 years old and who knows how corrupted it is? Hell I get a lot of crap in my registry after 6 months!

Thanks for the commands though, *I'll* have to keep those in mind. I'm not a DOS freak. More of a linux server guy , and a beginner at that to be honest.

-The Pentium Guy

 

[Jeff7]

I grew up with DOS. I learned it with a program called Tutordos that came on a 5.25" floppy disk. It was probably written in Qbasic. I've actually got the program saved on the hard drive.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

I grew up on Windows 3.1 (I was maybe 7 at the time). I think we paid $2000 for a top of the line computer, but look at how crappy it is now

 

[rogue1979]

Originally posted by: The Pentium Guy
Alright I've talked to him. It seems as though his dad is extremely mad at me because he had some office documents in there that he needed.

How's this?

Hey James,
I'm really sorry about what happened to your computer. And I didn't
meant to cause any damage or harm on purpose. However I do beleive
that I can help you get your files back.

Again the problem started when I suggested that you install AdAware
to remove any spyware/malicious programs that your computer might have
had. When you did the scan, several "dangerous files" (or so AdAware
calls them) were quarantined, and something got corrupted in the
Operating System

To Mr. Higgins:
Mr. Higgins, I'm extremely sorry for any damage I've caused to your
computer. James informed me that you had some important documents in
there that you need. Please accept my utmost apologies.

I've talked to several people and posted on several message boards
regarding how to deal with this situation. The majority of the asnwers
I received back was that the Operating System was infested with
spyware, that AdAware may have taken a part of the OS out with it when
quarantining.

I do feel that I can help regarding this matter, but please
disregard this advice if you wish to. I understand the feelings that
you may have toward me because of what happened.

I have some proposed solutions (which you can try if you wish). Please
look them over if you wish to.

1) Boot up into Safe Mode (hit F8 when "Windows 95" loading screen
comes up) and run AdAware, and unquarantine the quarantined files.
Then try rebooting into Windows 95 and see if that works.

2) If this doesn't work, then try booting to safe mode and
uninstalling AdAware from there.

3) If safe mode didn't work, then I think that the OS is completely corrupted.

I think the first priority is to rescue the important documents.
Easiest way to rescue the files would be to put the harddrive (in
Slave Mode) in another computer that works and copy the files there.
But keep in mind that the existing drive may have viruses and you may
be transferring viruses into the other computer so be sure you're
running a virus scanner while you do this.

Here's what I think the configuration would look like
PRIMARY_IDE:
Master = Existing Harddrive (on the working computer)
Slave = Harddrive (from the broken computer)

SECONDARY_IDE
Master - Existing CD/DVD Drive
Slave - Existing CD/DVD burner

4) Once you copy your files into the other harddrive, I would
reinstall Windows (95, 98, or 2000) on the harddrive (from the broken
computer) and then put it back into the computer*.

*I don't think the problem is hardware related, so I do beleive a
reformatting of the OS can solve this issue.

Please accept my utmost apologies Mr. Higgins. Again, I'm sorry for
any damage which I might have caused (directly or indirectly).

James, I hope to hear back from you.

Sound good? I mean his parents are really mad at me, because they had some seriously important office documents.

-The Pentium Guy

If his parents had some seriously important files and did not back them up off that ancient computer, they should be mad at themselves!

 

[TheLiberalTruth]

Windows 2000 doesn't require much to run, but at the best, something that is 10 years old is going to be very sluggish with 2K. Try this. Put the extra HDD in as master, slave the old one. Install 95 on the 'new' master, transfer all necessary files from slave drive, then format it.
I would also suggest that you tell the poor guy how to avoid spyware...that's the best spyware killer out there.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

I would also suggest that you tell the poor guy how to avoid spyware...that's the best spyware killer out there.

I got him to install Opera earlier (I prefer it over FF and IE for some reason, but definately over IE ), and I've told him not to click those "Shoot the monkey" things and install random programs randomly.

I think he'll be fine from this point onwards, I mean he's a really cool kid - he's willing to learn and understand. Hell he even said he wants to build his computer (to learn, to save money, and to get a faster computer for gaming ). He's been taking my advice since we met each other in my Intro To Java couse (which, of course, I completely slept through because it was INCREDIBLY boring and easy) and that's how we became friends (no, he's not a kid who would leach on to me for answers, he's a kid who I could point in the right direction and he'd get there himself). We've been through some ups and downs together, and in the end I think he'll take this whole experience as a learning experience, knowing him.

He did apologize to me for being angry earlier, so we're all good. I just wanted to apologize to his parents that's all.

 

[The Pentium Guy]

It seems as though this thread was moved to Operating Systems.