Need Help!!! Format and Restore System

[R.DOBSON10]

I had a virus on my computer. The virus has been removed but I'm still having problems. I took the computer back to the store I bought it from and was told to repair the damage that the virus caused I would have to Format and Restore the system/hard drive.

But when I put in the disk that came with the computer it doesn't say format and restore anywhere. It ony says Install Windows XP.

I need to format and restore my system/hard drive what do I do???

[Scott37189]

Well I don't know about Formatting but a System Restore is a pretty simple task. Go to your Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and click "System Restore." From there it walks you thru the process. Generally very quick and painless.

[BigDog]

But BACK EVERYTHING UP FIRST. I'm sure you know this, but you will lose EVERYTHING On your drive if you just restore the system.

[R.DOBSON10]

Well I don't know about Formatting but a System Restore is a pretty simple task. Go to your Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and click "System Restore." From there it walks you thru the process. Generally very quick and painless.

I did that but the problems were still there. That's when I took it to the store and they told me to do a full system restore. He said it was called format and restore. But I can't find it on the disk that came with the computer. Only thing I can find is Install Windows XP.

[jnicholas]

If you format your drive then it will wipe in clean of all data then usually the next step is to reinstall the operating system. But when you do that you will just have windows and nothing else. None of your files and your programs will have to be reinstalled.

[SportsFromA2]

If you format your drive then it will wipe in clean of all data then usually the next step is to reinstall the operating system. But when you do that you will just have windows and nothing else. None of your files and your programs will have to be reinstalled.

are you sure?? I thought if you do a total format and a fresh OS reinstall then pretty much you're starting from scratch... gotta do all the 545465432 windows updates, and reinstall anything you previously had installed (like firefox, office,...)

[Blindly Painted Bastard]

what you have to do is put the windows XP disk in the cd drive, and reboot. If your bios are set up correctly, it should ask you if you want to boot from CD.

If you don't get this, you need to get into your bios. Look for something like "Hit f2 for setup" orsomething when you are booting up your computer. Once in there, find the boot sequence, and put the CD rom drive ahead of the hard drive. DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE IN BIOS.

If you can boot from CD, just follow the instructions. As others have stated, this will wipe everything clean. Make a backup of what you want, but alas, who know if your backup will be full of the same virus?

try this and let us know how it goes.

peace, and good luck-
skittles

[SportsFromA2]

I usually end up reformatting every year, this is what I follow-
http://www.cyberwalker.net/faqs/rein...ml#reinstallxp

I always forget the msdos commands so I have it bookmarked, lol.

I'm sure your backups would most likely be infected with the virus also, but I'm sure after this experience you'll get some AV software in there, so when you try to copy the files back from your backup CD/DVD/whatever, then hopefully it should "clean" the files then!

[JimElNino]

If you've done the system restore and that hasn't helped, then you will have to reformat your hard drive, which means overwriting everything on it and starting from scratch.

Boot from the XP CD, delete your current partition, make a new partition, then format it with NTFS and install windows on it. This whole thing could take anywhere from 25minutes to an hour depending on your computer.

When its done make sure you download all the updates from Windows update.

[R.DOBSON10]

Thanks guys. I read Valents Skittles response and found what I needed to do.

The reason I couldn't find it before was because the guy at the store told me it would say "Format and Restore",but I had to go into a index page and I found it there. It was called partition and format,which threw me off the first time I seen it.(Before I wrote the thread)

I did the restall and the MAIN problems have been taken care of by the restore.

What happened was I had a virus on my computer and even after I removed it there were still problems. There were thesse two windows popping up everytime I logged into my account/file.

One said: RUNDLL Module not found and the other said System 32 these files are hidden. Now that I did the restore those windows don't pop up anymore.

Everything is running fairly good now. All though my browser is still a little slower than it was when I first downloaded it.

Anyway thanks again guys. +Rep for all.

[Blindly Painted Bastard]

glad you got it working again. FWIW, I reformat my machine prolly every 4-5 months... great way to keep it running nicely. After you do so a number of times, you get it down to a science, and it really isn't that big of a deal. I have a dvd burner, so I just burn a dvd of all of the programs I want to keep (which are all int eh same directory) and then format it.

Another option I've heard, that sounded kinda interesting: On your drive, create 2 partitions. On one partition, keep all of your system files, operating system, etc. On the other partition, keep all of your data files (documents, mp3s, etc). Then, when you want to reformat to increase your machine's performance, reformat just the partition where you keep your OS, and your data files should still be fine.

I've never tried this, but I'm a little worried about partitions. I had a situation with an old machine where the harddrive was permanently hosed because of partitions, and I've been a little leery to do any sub-partitions since then.

again, glad to see you got it working.