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Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 11622 Location: truro
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Posted: Sun Feb 17, 13 5:39 pm Post subject: damn idiot boy's broken his netbook |
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the request for assistance is at the bottom of this. bit bear with me, i do need to rant first.
So, the beginning of last year, i purchased a perfectly working, but second hand so affordable netbook for son. it's handed over to him with instructions to update the anti virus, scan regularly and do his other housekeeping.
a few months ago, the sound on it stops working, he's told how to deal with fixing that and dosen't bother. so i don't either, if he can't be arsed to help himself, then he can go without.
so today, he finally starts complaining that it's not working like it should and i finally get the machine off him. he admits that avg disapeared off it months ago and until today he's not bothered thinking about replacing it. i look and there's a LOT of unrecognised processes running.
so, i start uninstalling stuff that dosen't belong. toolbars. stuff that is supposedly identifying itself as anti virus but not any sort i can recognise. ask him to complete the rest that he can see, pass the machine back to me and i'll have a look.
i look up and he's playing a game on it.
apparently he's doign this to pass the time while avg is installing.
i demand he turns off the game. get the machine off him and found he's done less than half the list he should have done of the uninstalls. i also suspect he's uninstalled stuff that should have been there. cause his excuse was 'i removed everything that hadn't been used in ages. not the criteria we were looking for my dear.
so, i finish the uninstalls. and we set up a virus scan. first look through nets a few tracker cookies, 3 trojans and half a dozen high risk rougues in system32/drivers. last lot need manual removal.
set another avg scan that he bitches about doing. got to 54 known threats and counting. when it bluescreens.
son finally admits he's done none of his housekeeping at all. ever. he throws a fit at me. this is all apparently my fault. cause he didn't listen when i told him what he needed to do. he rants and sulks. i give him no sympathy. give him half an hour to sulk, then tell him why it's his fault and he accepts this. Ok, he screwed this up but he is admitting responsibility. thats a start and I don't think this is terminal. here's the point.
1. the files i removed from system32/drivers. was careful to ensure they were the files identified by avg. but considering that a scan after their removal turned up 50 previously unseen threats, there may well be something interesting going on here that has caused ME to make an error in deleting one of those files.
2. hoiked the battery after the bluescreen. it bluescreened again. rinse and repeat. next time xp gives me the option of safe mode. i take this. it gets down at least a couple of pages of what ti's doing to install xp before it goes. I'm therefore diagnosing a buggered OS. possibly linked to point 1.
anyone seeing any major error in my logic here?
now need to check diagnosis, will do this
1 into bios, set to usb boot. find or create a new ubuntu stick and test system. this will tell me if it's a system fault. i think unlikely. but can someone tell me if i can access the HD windows is installed on using this? or is this going to be similar to not being able to read an NTFS partition from '98.
2. . i'm thinking recovery disk. parents have XP installed. create recovery disk off their machine. run that and see if i can fix xp.
i don't have all the paperwork from the machine and i don't have the win key from it. it was one of those stuck to the bottom and ti's worn blank. otherwise i'd torrent xp and reinstall using that key.
or any other ideas. been a while since i had to do this stuff |
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Barefoot Andrew Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 21 Mar 2007 Posts: 22780 Location: In the 17th century
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cir3ngirl
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 11622 Location: truro
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Barefoot Andrew Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 21 Mar 2007 Posts: 22780 Location: In the 17th century
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 11622 Location: truro
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Barefoot Andrew Downsizer Moderator
Joined: 21 Mar 2007 Posts: 22780 Location: In the 17th century
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 11622 Location: truro
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 11622 Location: truro
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Nick
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Joined: 30 Dec 2006 Posts: 11622 Location: truro
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jamanda Downsizer Moderator
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Nick
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