serious problems...

[Dakotakid44]

my uncle's computer is really messed up. I don't think he has ran antivirus for a long time, and he cannot get into a lot of its programs. Every time he tries to click into his Norton antivirus it kicks him right out. When he tries to get on the Internet it kicks him right out, when he tries to do system restore it doesn't work. This is the way goes for about every program. Is there some way to get around all this so he can try and run antivirus, or just get his computer halfway running to figure it out. He is running Windows XP, I'm not sure if that is service pack one or two. It is an e machine. I would appreciate your help, thanks

 

[CycloWizard]

I would try booting in safe mode. Not sure if that will work, but it's worth a shot.

 

[Paperlantern]

CycloWizard has a good idea there, try running the antivirus in that mode, it may work. If it doesnt, you might be able to get it to run a scan if you install it in another machine as a slave drive, that will find a chunk of the infected files, not necessarily any of the processes though. Or, try and find an up to date non windows based virus scan, theres one on hirens boot cd, but you have to slip the definition files into the iso

 

[compusaguy]

Yeah...um...backup/reformat/reinstall.

 

[Paperlantern]

Originally posted by: compusaguy
Yeah...um...backup/reformat/reinstall.

i'm... um... sure he doesnt want to do that

another thought would be that the OS is corrupt, try doing a repair install with the XP CD and see if that helps at all

 

[jackschmittusa]

You should be able to boot from the Norton cd to do a scan. It won't include any definitions newer than when it was produced, but it may help as it will not be corrupted or interferred with by anything else running in the Windows enviornment. Safe mode is a good second step.

 

[montag451]

if you do backup format restore, make sure that the backup is clean!!!!!!!!