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Okay, I'll try that. Last time I tried it seemed to have all the errors that I'd experience normally, but I'll give it another go, maybe I did it wrong.
One piece of hope is that I found today I could access all my files through "explore". Naturally when I tried to copy them to my D drive it said "something went wrong" (though did at least attempt it).
Out of interest, how do you back your files up? External harddrive?
Internal , external, on other hdds in the lan and the basic data cd and dvds.
Some stuff is of such a nature, you might even have back up copies scattered all over the country. I know I do. But it is up to you as to what you would really hate to lose.
So I could potentially transfer some to the E, G or P drives (for example) and it would remain there even if I reformatted C?
Anyway, I tried safe mode and nothing works in there... msconfig, system restore, hijack this... nothing.
However, I CAN get into system management, with the drives section. Can I do something with this?
I'm resigned to formatting now, but I really would like to keep some files before I do so. If this is indeed possible.
Oh, someone I know has suggested to me that I can reinstall Windows XP and it WON'T erase my files, they will still remain intact.
Is there any truth in this?
Thanks for all your help btw, guys, I appreciate I'm a total ignoramous in all this but I'm learning a lot.
It isn't a suitable option for where you have a bad malware infestation, as it will leave the malware intact along with your programs and data :(
Your best option at this point may be to slave the drive to another PC that has virus active protection and copy any files you want to keep to backup media. Then you could reformat and reinstall, obtain active virus and malware protection, and copy your saved files back, scanning them as you do so.
Can I do this with an external hard drive?
What I'm looking to do is find some way to rescue my files before total reformatting. I really wouldn't like to lose all my work unless absolutely necessary.
Bear in mind my files won't copy across to D... would they copy across to another drive? (And what drive would I be using... sorry to be thick. I could google this stuff but my time online is limited these days as I'm obviously not on my own computer).
If you can't copy the files to an internal drive then it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to copy them to an external one. But jdc2000's suggestion ought to work, as it will be a different, non-infected, OS that is doing the copying.
Things are looking up.... I was just having one last mill around when I found that if I clicked on my word files they came up!!!! If I tried to load the word application it wouldn't load, but if I clicked on word files...
SO... I then clicked on a document, right clicked and did "open with AOL"... and here I am!!!
I've mailed some documents I was working on to myself, so that's one thing out of the way.
I've still got 20gb of music to do (most of it paid for, I'm generally honest) but we'll see how we go.
In fact, I might just try and do the same thing but this time "open with CE anti-spyware".
Let's see if I can't clean my computer up enough to free up this stuff...
Okay, update:
I managed to get CA Anti-Spyware up and running through this backdoor method. It's listing that the removal of one piece of spyware has failed.
That piece of spyware is rutternam E which is in my drive/spools
Hmmm, I also seem to have darksma under software key "don juan".
Neither can be removed by CA anti-spyware.
Hmmm, interestingly every time I try and click on an application now it's changed from "you may not have permission" to suggesting that it doesn't have a listed purpose and that I need to change it through folder options. I can't access folder options, but this seems to be getting better...
ruternam is no longer being detected by CA anti-spyware.. it's now just darksma that is showing up and registering as cannot be removed.
To clarify:
The only malware that I'm not able to get rid of using CA anti-spyware is darksma.
I can't use CA Virus scanner as it won't work... ditto safe mode, msconfig, system restore or hijack this.
Oh... FakeAlertF... it will be quarantined effectively by the system, but then constantly reappears.