Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Bogie on February 21, 2009, 04:13:11 PM
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...while I could actually touch it, without, omg, interfering with the bandwidth and music and boys, and it got approx 100 trojans, etc...
And then it said it wanted to reboot.
And now it goes to the logon screen, you punch the password, it goes, then it immediately signs off...
Any hints? It's an older box, but running XP...
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Will it boot to Safe Mode?
Brad
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When I boot to safe, I get the logon screen with both admin and the kid's setup... Both logon, and then logoff...
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Unless someone else has a better suggestion (which they probably do) it looks like your only option is to boot to the CD and run the repair utility.
Brad
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Give this a shot
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** If you are still unable to boot normally **
1. When computer restarts, press F8 to access Advanced Menu.
2. Use arrow keys to select Safe Mode with Command Prompt, press Enter.
3. Select operating system, press Enter.
4. "Safe Mode" screen will come up and then a login screen will appear, select Administrator.
You will come to another black screen with a blue bar across the top that says "cmd.exe". Note about CMD.EXE- This is a limited command line prompt, you must type exactly what you see. The letters "cd" stand for change directory and are followed by one space and then the directory name. Please use the key above the "Enter" key for the backslash character "\". Press Enter.
Type: cd c:\.
Press Enter. (The directory will then change to C:\>)
Type: cd windows.
Press Enter. (Directory will now change to c:\windows>)
Type: cd system32.
Press Enter. (Directory will change to C:\windows\system32>)
Type: cd restore.
Press Enter. (Directory changes to c:\windows\system32\restore)
Type: rstrui.exe.
Press Enter. (Note: do not type in cd this time.)
The "System Restore" screen will now come up. It will say "Welcome to System Restore".
Restore my computer to an earlier time will be selected, click Next.
Click on a bold date which was **BEFORE** the day your pc was having problems and click Next.
The confirmation screen will appear, click Next.
The computer will begin the restore process, and will restart.
When the computer boots up, you will see a message which says "Restoration Complete", click OK.
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Lemme know if it works and I'll send you my bill. :angel:
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I'll give it a shot. Do you like Shiner?
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No dice, Campers...
I get the dumbed-down logon screen, showing admin and teenager's userID, click admin (seems that her mommy never configged a password for admin too...), and it does the same thing...
I am getting a fleeting error box that shows up saying something about viewpoint service - I'm guessing that it's a file that AVG nuked...
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Rebooted a few times... It's saying something about a breakpoint, if that helps...
It'd be real nice if I could boot a CD, and then go in and just delete a few things... Will that UltimateBoot CD let me get to the file system?
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If you have the WinXP CD, I'd lay a fresh install over the old one (don't format the drive, duh). None of your apps will work, but you can get to your data. Once you do that, nuke the box and start over fresh.
Chris
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nuke it from orbit Format the thing. Unlikely that you'll loose anything that will cause the world to end.
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Asked Jen, because the only word I'm getting out of the teenager is "Whatever..."
Oh, she backed up the data religiously.
Told her I'd format it.
OMG! THE PICTURES!
Sigh... Time to dig something out, or stick the thing in a USB box... And teach everyone about how to do a proper backup.
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They won't listen about the backups. At all. Don't bother wasting your time.
Trust me. I've got two sisters. One 18, and the other 14. Both are morons when it comes to computers.
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pendrivelinux.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fubuntu8-boot-menu.jpg&hash=a9d8ec07c9b5657eb54eda9fe28ceecbf5e216d0)
Perfect for internets-surfing teenagers/grandparents/other people that use their computer but ask you to maintain it.
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So, does Ubuntu repartition the disk so that I can still access the data that's on it?
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If not, you can always use the Live CD to boot and run the system from the CD in order to access the data on the hard drive.
Chris
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Surprise, surprise. A 13 year old's computer has crap running on it.
Any hints? It's an older box, but running XP...
Pull the hard disk, connect it as a second to something else, and scan until clean. Then scan with a malware scanner, until clean.
If it still won't boot, run a repair install of XP.
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Lee has it. Use another machine to clean the drive.
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Lee has it. Use another machine to clean the drive.
Take Lee's suggestion, backup any data you need, then take zahc's suggestion.
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...how does a person manage to get so many trojans?
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I had a similar problem with a virus or trojan. Boot into safe mode and see where it hangs, if anywhere. Mine was some daemon tools sys file that got corrupted. Also, when you boot into safe mode, there is an option to turn off system reboot on crash. Worst case, you'll be able to see the error message when it crashes, hopefully.
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...how does a person manage to get so many trojans?
By doing stuff like running Limewire and similar programs, to clicking on anything that pops up (especially if it says "FREE LAPTOP!!!!"), to visiting questionable websites and likely doing it without one iota of virus protection and firewalls.
In short, because they are farking idiots, or 13 years old, but I repeat myself...
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Blue Coat K9 Web Protection:
http://www1.k9webprotection.com/
Oh, and it's free.
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By doing stuff like running Limewire and similar programs, to clicking on anything that pops up (especially if it says "FREE LAPTOP!!!!"), to visiting questionable websites and likely doing it without one iota of virus protection and firewalls.
In short, because they are farking idiots, or 13 years old, but I repeat myself...
I don't remember having major virus/trojan problems at that age. Of course, I ran... various programs on my computer until I discovered RS.
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As far as I know, we've got her, and her friends, who seem to click on anything that has to do with myspace, boys, skatepunks, fashion, hair, or any combination thereof... Her little brother, who barely understands how the webz works, but likes to play games, and who also likely randomly surfs...
I'm gonna pull the drive, see what I can get off it, and then reload a fresh copy of Windoze... Because her mommy has told me that nobody wants to learn anything new.
And Mommy's sister chewed me out tonight for putting Tbird on one of the business computers - "It doesn't work." Doh, took her half an hour to tell me that it -quit- working after she installed McAfee... Doh, two firewalls, one of them McAfeecrap...
Of course, before I insisted that they do stuff like that, they were doing total restores about once a month...
I need a xanax the size of Mike's ego...
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Because her mommy has told me that nobody wants to learn anything new.
Try letting her use a comp that has Ubuntu on it already, she might like it.
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Try letting her use a comp that has Ubuntu on it already, she might like it.
+1! Configured properly, Linux Ubuntu functions so much like Windows it will only take a few minutes to learn the differences. It may not be as visually stimulating, but it uses far less of your computer's resources, it's free, and isn't susceptible to Windows viruses.
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If they insist on running Windows, at least force them to run as regular users, NOT administrators or power users. Downside: if they want to install something, you have to come do it.
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...how does a person manage to get so many trojans?
By not using the computer equivalent of the Trojan brand, with a dash abstinence.
Chris
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I don't remember having major virus/trojan problems at that age. Of course, I ran... various programs on my computer until I discovered RS.
How old are you? Let's assume you're 20. It would have been 7 years ago when you were 13 (math is fundamental). Viruses, while very common, still weren't quite as common and easy to get as today. It's getting exponentially worse every year.
I'm 35. Computer viruses existed when I was 13, but they were harder to get because they had so few vectors. That said, they tended to be more damaging to the computer, but less likely to give the virus writer or user access to your bank account.
I got my first computer virus when I was 19, in college (don't many of us get our first "bug" in college from unsafe practices. ;) :D ).
That said, since then, I haven't gotten a significant computer virus. It's a combination of luck, system setup, and personal habits.
Chris
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Try letting her use a comp that has Ubuntu on it already, she might like it.
Hell, just try running the Ubuntu Live CD for a while.
Chris
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If they insist on running Windows, at least force them to run as regular users, NOT administrators or power users. Downside: if they want to install something, you have to come do it.
Generally I would agree, but if the copy of XP is XP Home, I'd say don't bother. There is no power user type account, you're either a full admin or plain user. With Windows, there are too many things that require a power user for this to work with XP Home. I tried that on our home laptop and got so tired of having to bounce into my Admin account, I made our daily account an admin. XP Home lacks the user privilege granularity to be usable in that manner.
Chris
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I'm 35. Computer viruses existed when I was 13, but they were harder to get because they had so few vectors.
Yup. I remember scanning every *beep* *beep* floppy disk in the place I was working then, for Michelangelo. This would have been 1991 or 2. The first virus that really came to the public attention, because it had a trigger date.
It's a combination of luck, system setup, and personal habits.
Personal habits is a biiig factor.
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If it were my 13 year old, and there wasn't anything I wanted on the computer....I'd nuke from orbit. Reinstall the OS, lock down the firewall settings and use an admin password. That'll teach the twerp, losing all his favorite games and music and such.
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I might be missing out on the times, but what the HELL is a 13 year old doing with a private computer and internet access? :O
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Ok, solution time.
Here are the two ways I'd do it:
Ubuntu. Not the best solution from what you describe.
Or...
Install XP and all apps. Use Norton Ghost to make a copy you can store on a DVD, stash that DVD somewhere safe. When kiddo nukes the system again you can rebuild in minutes rather than hours.
Next, install a 2nd drive and mount the filesystem it to the working system without giving it a drive letter (it shows up as a directory under C:\ instead). Mount it as "c:\documents and settings\<kid's account>". Therefore, ALL data she creates will be stored on this 2nd drive, even stuff on the desktop. I've done this before and it works well. I mounted my 2nd drive as the "My Documents" directory, but there's no reason you couldn't do it for the user's entire "home" directory. BTW, at work, our Unix home directories on any given system aren't on the physical system, but NFS shares on a SAN. That way, no matter which system we're on, we have our normal home directory.
Next, install a third drive and have windows mirror these two drives or install some sort of automagic folder syncronizing software to make sure all contents of the 2nd drive are copied to the 3rd drive. That is your data backup. The third drive could even be a USB external, though that would work better with the syncing software. I think mirroring to a USB connected drive would slow the system too much since it's done in real time.
When you have to rebuild her computer, her data will be safely stored on the 2nd drive (and 3rd drive if you go that route).
It'll be a bit of work to set up, but it'll make restoration easier. If you do this, I would hold off on the Ghost imaging until after you get the other drives configured as well so a restore won't blow away the mount points. You "Ghost" the system after all configuration is complete, just before "handing the keys" to the kid. You could even ghost the system to the 3rd drive and run the restore from there in the future.
Chris
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I don't remember having major virus/trojan problems at that age. Of course, I ran... various programs on my computer until I discovered RS.
Look, you are a nerd. We're talking about other 13 year olds, who are as dumb as a bag of hammers (a small percentage eventually wise up, most grow up but stay just as stupid). You are very much the exception, not the rule. Hence Bogie's post about "teh stupidity!" of the "users"
My sisters are complete idiots, but in comparison to the brats Bogie is dealing with, they are computer genius.
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It's not working. Make it work!
I'm gonna scrounge an Ubuntu live cd tonight, and see if I can suck all the photos down to a removable drive...
Problem is, if it is removable, it has to be unplugged and put away, because it may randomly be unplugged and tossed across the room for no apparent reason...
"It's a computer. There are moving parts inside. You have to be careful with it?"
"Why isn't it working?"
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I'm gonna scrounge an Ubuntu live cd tonight, and see if I can suck all the photos down to a removable drive...
That should solve the issue of saving the pictures. The existing partitions should automount.
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Well, I'm about to start screwing with it... I -sincerely- hope that the CD version will let me load a USB drive...
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Not long ago I got hit with a virus -- one of those that masquarades as an anti-virus application and pops up a window "offering" its services. In my case, it has since been confirmed that the source was PhotoBucket, but it took PhotoBucket a long while to (a)'fess up that they had a problem, and (b) do anything about it.
The point of all this is that the virus corrupted something in the boot sequence of WinXP. Reloading WinXP did not solve the problem. Ultimately, I pulled the hard drive and installed it as a second drive in another computer of the same make and model. Lo and behold, all the data files were intact. So the solution was to copy all the data files off, reformat the drive in the spare box, reinstall the drive in the primary box and then reinstall WinXP and all the primary applications, then copy the saved data files back onto the primary computer.
T'was a pain in the wazooskus, but I now have my data intact and a (hopefully) cleaner and better organized hard drive.
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I need a xanax the size of Mike's ego...
I need a sig line. Can I use that?
I dealt with a 50 year old for the same problems your describing.
Him, the fact that he lived in Chicago, and the bad capacitors around 2000 got me out of building systems.
Now I only work on my own systems, cars, appliances, TV's...
If people know you can fix things there is no limit to the things you will be asked to fix for free.
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I might be missing out on the times, but what the HELL is a 13 year old doing with a private computer and internet access? :O
I had a private computer an Internet access at that age. It was my reward for successfully learning to speak English. :D
As you see, my family may have made a mistake there... =D =D
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I'm still fixing computers that died from those bad capacitors.
New motherboards for all my customers thus afflicted. =|
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I'm still fixing computers that died from those bad capacitors.
New motherboards for all my customers thus afflicted. =|
Two trips from Kansas City to Chicago in a week killed all profit on that one and several others.
And then the others started dying.
I told him to go buy a Dell. He's there problem now. =D
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Dell had the bad cap problem too, and the problem lasted way later than 2000. Some folks I know have a P4, new enough to have SATA drives, with a whole buttload of blown caps. I've redone windows about 3 times for them, and told them about the problem, over the years.
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Give this a shot
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** If you are still unable to boot normally **
1. When computer restarts, press F8 to access Advanced Menu.
2. Use arrow keys to select Safe Mode with Command Prompt, press Enter.
3. Select operating system, press Enter.
good advice snipped by boyd
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Lemme know if it works and I'll send you my bill. :angel:
Good advice, but ya know, there really is no time like the present for teen to put down the ipod and learn about system care herself ... My day job has been hovering around support positions for ~20 years now and the most rewarding support I do is when it gets other people thinking about what the system is doing so that they can fix it next time without me. Some guy said something cogent about learning to fish sometime. I forget who ;)
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Well, I'm about to start screwing with it... I -sincerely- hope that the CD version will let me load a USB drive...
The Ubuntu install CD can act as a live CD or as an install. Boot the PC with it as a live CD and it will let you mount USB drives and access any FAT or NTFS partitions on the PC's hard drive.
That is the way I would handle this. There is no way I would take the drive out of that PC and connect it to another Windows machine. That's an excellent way for whatever has infected her PC to get it's hooks in yours.
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bksnip
And Mommy's sister chewed me out tonight for putting Tbird on one of the business computers - "It doesn't work." Doh, took her half an hour to tell me that it -quit- working after she installed McAfee... Doh, two firewalls, one of them McAfeecrap...
Of course, before I insisted that they do stuff like that, they were doing total restores about once a month...
I need a xanax the size of Mike's ego...
May I suggest a different prescription? I have this friend (true story) who has trouble like this. She talked to her doctor about it and he grabbed the ol' rx pad and wrote down one word. You might think it was "Xanax" or even Dewars ;) but it was the word "No". He directed her to post this on the frame of her monitor and consult it every time someone asked her to volunteer for something. And make no mistake about it, your 13 year old is using you as a volunteer. She may not -want- to learn this stuff, but if she valued it properly she -could-.
I have an 11 yo who insists on finding "free" screensavers and games on the net. He began learning about the cost of "free" when I disconnected his system from our home network. He didn't like it. So late one Saturday we reconnected it about 10pm when no one else was using things and we watched the access points activity light go like a bonfire. I explained to him that it wasn't ethical for me to give the russian mafia (or whoever had powned his machine) network bandwidth to send his mom P*n*s enhancement emails. So his choice was to have network or fix the problem. Then I backed down a little and helped him find a removal tool for that particular trojan.
He's a lot more careful about "free" now. bk425
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If people know you can fix things there is no limit to the things you will be asked to fix for free.
Ain't that the truth. BTDT, got the T-shirt, etc.
Had an eMachine with swollen caps just a couple of weeks ago. That client got new motherboard.
I'm going to try a repair on his old one just to see if I can do it. I did a lot of component-level repair back in the day.
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Ain't that the truth. BTDT, got the T-shirt, etc.
When I help people with stuff like this I try to make it clear to them that it is on the condition that they also let me teach them how to take care of things themselves. If they aren't willing to hold up their end of the bargain then they're on their own.
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I'm a computer tech for the air force. People ask me to fix personal *expletive deleted*it all the time. I've hit the point where if I have to help you more than once for something created from your own stupidity/not listening to people, you better be paying me cash.
Kids are the worst to fix things for though. I hooked up my friend's daughter after her sister changed the lock code on her phone. A few google searches and software downloads later, I had the thing unlocked and working. He had to basically wring a thank you out of her (shes 10). Guess what I'm not doing for free anymore? :-p
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Why on God's green earth would a ten-year-old have a cell phone?
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May I suggest a different prescription? I have this friend (true story) who has trouble like this. She talked to her doctor about it and he grabbed the ol' rx pad and wrote down one word. You might think it was "Xanax" or even Dewars ;) but it was the word "No". He directed her to post this on the frame of her monitor and consult it every time someone asked her to volunteer for something. And make no mistake about it, your 13 year old is using you as a volunteer. She may not -want- to learn this stuff, but if she valued it properly she -could-.
I have an 11 yo who insists on finding "free" screensavers and games on the net. He began learning about the cost of "free" when I disconnected his system from our home network. He didn't like it. So late one Saturday we reconnected it about 10pm when no one else was using things and we watched the access points activity light go like a bonfire. I explained to him that it wasn't ethical for me to give the russian mafia (or whoever had powned his machine) network bandwidth to send his mom P*n*s enhancement emails. So his choice was to have network or fix the problem. Then I backed down a little and helped him find a removal tool for that particular trojan.
He's a lot more careful about "free" now. bk425
This is probably one of the most thoughtful and correct posts in this entire thread.
I fix PCs for a living and I try to teach people that they can help themselves if they'd just stop fearing the machine. It's refreshing and invigorating watching people become the masters of their own destiny.
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I fix PCs for a living and I try to teach people that they can help themselves if they'd just stop fearing the machine. It's refreshing and invigorating watching people become the masters of their own destiny.
Preach it, Brother! While I only do the PC repair gig as a part time business, I often try to enlighten my customers as to how they can fix a lot of problems themselves. It is a lot of fun watching the light come on in their eyes as they realize what they are capable of doing.
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Why on God's green earth would a ten-year-old have a cell phone?
Babies pop out of the womb nowadays with a cell.
Back when I was in skool (elementary and middle) only the drug dealers had cell phones.
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Back when I was in skool (elementary and middle) only the drug dealers had cell phones.
Back when I was in school the only phones we had plugged into the wall and had little roundy things to dial with.
Brad
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I just spent the weekend rebuilding my dads PC, with my old PC internals. Its all an upgrade for him.
This man used to work for TI and helped design the Speak and Spell. He lectures me on the proper care and feeding of IC chips, silicon wafers and other things of the sort but was afraid to open a case.
Once we got it opened and I explained the layout and showed him the schematics, he had it all together, and the OS install running in 30 mins. It was a great feeling, for both of us.