laptop repair needed

[sittall]

my friend's HP laptop seems to have a virus/worm. it will start up but will not do system restore or any of the check tools much less connect to the internet. does anyone on this forum do computer repair or have a recommendation?

[ric]

I am no expert at all on computers, but can remember a few things from watching a tech work on mine. Seems you're going to need to do a complete re-load of windows with a recovery cd. First, if your friend has any files he'd like to save, I'd buy a hard drive enclosure (can get on amazon for under $10 incl. shipping). The drive will come out easily and, provided you have a good antivirus on a working computer, you can hook this drive up to the working pc and get your files. I've done this successfully, perhaps another pw'er can comment on whether this is too risky to the other pc.

I not sure, when you say it starts up you are not getting to any screen that would allow you to do a restore, if you can boot from cd, such as "run" from the start menu, or even the command prompt screen?

If you are also having the boot problem, I had the same problem with a Toshiba and was ready to toss it, but found that there was a boot command, maybe it is an over-ride or something, but on the Toshiba, we needed to insert the recovery cd, then hold down the "C" key while pressing the "on" button. This sent it directly to the cd-rom. I don't think this would be universal to all pc's, but I might guess that HP would have something similar.

Good luck.

[jdirgo]

I forget which it is - but either F5 or F8 held down while booting up will give you a choice of booting into "safe mode" which might let you get the laptop up and running and then let you run a virus scan.

John Dirgo, R, BIC, EcoBroker, ABR, e-PRO
Aloha Coast Realty, LLC
808-987-9243 cell
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[kabloink]

F8 will give you the safe mode option. Also, on the same menu, you can try loading a previous configuration to see if that helps.

Does the laptop have a cd? If so and your friend has a bootable antivirus cd, I would strongly suggest doing a scan that way. Scanning while Windows is running will miss some items due to stealth techniques and the fact the virus may be memory resident meaning it will keep reinfecting even if you repair files. You can also download a free bootable antivirus cdrom image from Avira.

http://www.free-av.com/en/tools/12/avira...ystem.html

[kathy]

Sittall- my husband fixes computers. he worked for HP for 30 yrs.
jim@vashro.net

[konadave]

It depends on how badly infected the computer is. It may be able to be saved without having to reformat and reload Windows. Though the easiest and quickest way to fix the problem is to reformat and reload. Does he have the recovery image CD's for the computer? If so he is in good shape just in case. Either way his data should be able to be saved without a problem.

Be aware that there are a lot of people here on this island that are claiming to be computer experts and they are not. A customer of mine just last week found someone that apparently didn't know what they were doing. Which is why I was there undoing what the previous expert had done.

The Kona Forum
http://www.konaforum.com

Da Kine PC Repair Upgrade
http://www.DaKinePC.com

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former". --Albert Einstein

[mdd7000]

Newer HP/Compaq PC's have the ability to enter the system restore partition by pressing F11 repeatedly right as the system gets past the BIOS splash screen. This will allow you to do an attempted reload/fix of XP or in worst case, reload the OS from scratch.

[sittall]

Mahalo to everyone who responded to my post. My friend is now back at home and was able to use his recovery CD to clean up his problems. He is now back on line and surfing the web, maybe even this website

Thanks again to everyone who offered help!