more computer help needed

I have to agree with Russ. The fact of the matter is, that unless you have something very important you need to save (which you have already stated you don't), and in a lot of cases where you DO need to save something, it's much easier, much less time consuming, and makes things much faster to just reformat. Russ has outlined most of the steps needed, but not knowing what your technical level is, I will add a couple of notes.

For step A2: If this is necessary, especially with a secondary network card (not built into the motherboard) make sure you turn off the power on the computer. You do NOT want to unplug the power cord. touch the metal on the case before touching any of the boards in the machine.

If you get stuck anywhere, or need anymore help, there are several people here capable of helping out, just give us as many details as possible.

Good luck!
 
Detlev Rackow said:
Hello skins,

sorry, but this is not a secure way to overcome the problem of a deeply compromised computer.

Modern viruses are able to hide themselves with so-called stealth mechanisms which prevent a virusscanner from detecting the virus. There have been a lot of viruses lately which implant a filter driver or replace system functionality so the files or the corresponding registry values are reported to the scanner as not present. Furthermore, lots of viruses change the security settings in the browser and mailprogram, making it easier for future malware to become active on this machine. Booting in safe mode is also no reliable cure for these problems - an active virus can modify settings in the registry which determine which drivers and processes get loaded in the safe mode, thus ensuring that they will also be loaded in safe mode.

The only really reliable method to overcome a virus is to really format the harddrive and install from scratch. Otherwise, you will likely end up with a machine which gets contaminated again in short time or which has even never been completely clean.

Programs which modify the autorun-options in the registry and the startmenu will also not offer a complete protection. A virus will not always reside as a stand-alone executable. Lots of viruses are simply dlls which hook up in the Windows Explorer or Internet Explorer. These files will not appear in a program which simply displays autostart items.

However, using AVG on the new installation as a free and reasonably good virus scanner is a good suggestion. :-)

My main job is to work as the security administrator for a local government with 6,000 PCs, and this is my best professional advice.

Regards,

Detlev
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agreed to a point, but i would guess he doesn't have a virus. it's probably just malware. doing what i said can possibly rule a virus out in most cases. if the problem continues after these steps then i would consider a more invasive solution.
 
crosseyedjoe said:
AND YES, stop clicking on those ads with naked bodies, or a sweet sounding message about her hot website. :D
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WHAT!!!! is that bad for the comp lol
Just kidding i really and honestly appreciate all the help guys
 
For what it's worth, I don't run virus software. I keep my windows updates current, and I buy my porn for the bigscreen. I don't click links in forwarded emails that are obviously chain letters, and I don't download much free software. I backup all my data to an external drive, that does get scanned for viruses each time. As a result of these practices, I've never lost one byte of data to malicious software. When I notice extra processes running on the machine, I track down the source and remove it. When that proves too difficult or annoying, or my performance is significantly impacted, I take the opportunity to rebuild my PC.

I've followed these practices for two decades and have never been burned. There are literally hundreds of new viruses being written.. at this very moment.. no software can keep up with that level of proliferation. Backup your data, stay away from free porn and free software from unknown sources, and for the love of god people, stop forwarding the chain emails.
 
I'll say it again, buy Windows XP. That means:

1. Clean install, EVERYTHING "GOOD TO GO"
2. Hardware will be supported, no worries
3. Windows Security Center is included and will alert you if you do not have an anti-virus running, firewall, etc...

And afterward, download AntiVir rather than AVG, because it's less anoying. Both are free, both work fine... While you're at it, download Lovasoft's Ad-Aware, for future use...it's free, and like others have said, works great.

NOTE: If your computer sucks, which, it probabaly does, you should just buy a new one rather than installing XP and getting a new computer shortly after...
 
Good advice.. I definitely don't recommend sticking with 98 unless you really have no alternative. Man, things were such a pain to install back then.
 
cincyman said:
Since you guys seem to know your s@#t i hope you can help and please dont flame me for being in the wrong area-- To make it pool related we are just trying to get it to work so he can read the AZB forums and watch pro pool video

Here is the problem:::
I recently gave a friend 2 old comps for him to use, He wants to use roadrunner and when we tried to set it up on the "better" comp it would not read that it had a usb and so i installed ethernet and it wouldnt read that ethernet was installed.

Now 2 days before this i had zoomtown high speed through the phone compnay and it worked fine.

Now we hooked it up to the other comp that was filled with spyware and viruses and it worked immediately ,, but it is very slowwwwwwww

I was wondering if someone could help me get the speed up.

Can i wipe out the comp basically starting from stratch and if i can what do i need to get it back up with just the basics things on there.

My friend has no use other than this forum and looking at fantasy football
sites. He does not download anything or need any special extras.

My question can i wipe out the hard drive and viruses so it will speed up and how can i do it????////
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I only have one thing to say. I had a problem with my bosses computer. He is always going to unknown sites and trying to get "free" coupons, etc. He had his computer so messed up I almost went for a complete re-install of XP.

I went to www.geekstogo.com and asked them for help. Granted, it took about a week to correct all the problems, but, they are willing and excited about helping you solve these problems. They do this for their hobby and are pretty much up to date on current viruses and methods to erase them.

Not knocking anyones ability on this forum to correct the problem, but, they seem to have the time available and can take it one step at a time. All these suggestions for anti spyware can also be downloaded from this site. Good Luck whatever path you chose to take.
 
I gotta chime in since I make some of my living doing this... you don't need a clean wipe/reformat/whatever.

99.9% of the viruses these days are not out to destroy your computer, ruin the bios, etc... not saying they can't, but these days those kinds of virus are rare. If you have a virus that's designed to be truly destructive, you'd know it by now.

Most viruses, at least the 'successful' ones, are just designed to spread as fast as possible, and even those are rare compared to adware/malware, which is just designed to throw up as much spam and porn popups as possible in the hopes that you'll click something and make someone a few pennies.

What's silly is that a lot of the stuff that results in slowing down your PC doesn't even do it on purpose, it's just crappily written by amateurs and slows stuff down as a result.

All that being said, manually finding and fixing all the viruses with some of the (very good) suggested software already mentioned... might be slower and definitely would be not quite as thorough as a clean install. If you go with a clean install, definitely take seymour's advice and spring for windows XP. You can get it for like 100 bucks if you shop around.

Also for probably 50-80 bucks you can buy an hour of a computer tech's time and figure out the problem with the USB/ethernet on the first computer. It should not take more than an hour to fix that. (It should take about 10-15 mins and they'll charge you an hour lol)
 
CreeDo said:
I gotta chime in since I make some of my living doing this... you don't need a clean wipe/reformat/whatever.

99.9% of the viruses these days are not out to destroy your computer, ruin the bios, etc... not saying they can't, but these days those kinds of virus are rare. If you have a virus that's designed to be truly destructive, you'd know it by now.

Most viruses, at least the 'successful' ones, are just designed to spread as fast as possible, and even those are rare compared to adware/malware, which is just designed to throw up as much spam and porn popups as possible in the hopes that you'll click something and make someone a few pennies.

What's silly is that a lot of the stuff that results in slowing down your PC doesn't even do it on purpose, it's just crappily written by amateurs and slows stuff down as a result.

All that being said, manually finding and fixing all the viruses with some of the (very good) suggested software already mentioned... might be slower and definitely would be not quite as thorough as a clean install. If you go with a clean install, definitely take seymour's advice and spring for windows XP. You can get it for like 100 bucks if you shop around.

Also for probably 50-80 bucks you can buy an hour of a computer tech's time and figure out the problem with the USB/ethernet on the first computer. It should not take more than an hour to fix that. (It should take about 10-15 mins and they'll charge you an hour lol)
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I am going to have to figure out the usb eternet problem no matter what so i think i am going to do what you said there and have my buddy spend the 100 bucks and fix it--- all the advice was great and i tried some of the get fatse rmethods on my home comp and it worked like a charm
Thanks!
 
Just curious, what are you going to spend the $100 on?

$100 on a tech with Windows 98 experience = temporary fix
$100 on Windows XP = permanent fix, and bonus of having a license to use with the next PC..
 
Bastian said:
Just curious, what are you going to spend the $100 on?

$100 on a tech with Windows 98 experience = temporary fix
$100 on Windows XP = permanent fix, and bonus of having a license to use with the next PC..
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Good question--- i need to have the ethernet and usb problem solved on the comp with Windows ME so i guess he will have to do both? When the Roadrunner tech has me go into right click my comp and look at the usb connection it has a yellow question mark-- they then have me try to manually or "advance" install and when i do it gets to a certain screen and freezes. Well after going through this about 5 times and 6 hours later (my friend is more illiterate than I) the last tech said i needed to get an ethernet card and when i installed that it would still say it was not connected and the comp was to slow to use Roadrunner (233mhz) the tech said it was because of winME ?
 
Whoa.. a 233mhz processor.. I'm surprised windows runs at all. Don't bother buying XP for that machine. Anything past Windows 3.1 (DOS) would have trouble doing anything. Roadrunner on that level of PC is rather pointless, in my opinion.
 
Bastian said:
Whoa.. a 233mhz processor.. I'm surprised windows runs at all. Don't bother buying XP for that machine. Anything past Windows 3.1 (DOS) would have trouble doing anything. Roadrunner on that level of PC is rather pointless, in my opinion.
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It had zoomtown and other high speed internets on it for the last 4 or 5 years and worked fine so i dont understand why it wont work with roadrunner. It was my dad old comp he gave to my friend and then i gave him my old one that runs slow because of the viruses and stuff.
 
Depends on the bus speed, but I can definitely understand why some modems would work while others would not.. if Roadrunner says it's too slow a bus, then it is.. not much anyone could do to make it work.

But really, don't put XP on that machine.. when they say minimum requirements, they mean bare minimum to successfully install.. not minimum to be remotely functional.
 
yeah, it is too slow for xp. If you have the scratch, I recommend you find a local computer shop and have them build you one with xp pre-installed, and have them throw the old hard drive into the new machine. It will be like night and day when you finally move to a modern machine with a good operating system.
 
CreeDo said:
yeah, it is too slow for xp. If you have the scratch, I recommend you find a local computer shop and have them build you one with xp pre-installed, and have them throw the old hard drive into the new machine. It will be like night and day when you finally move to a modern machine with a good operating system.
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Well the whole problem is I have a very nice dell that runs great--- these comp where given to a friend of mine with a very tight budget who just wants to read a little about pool and fantasy football so he will have to come up with another solution
 
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