[slyboogie]

hey there guys,

right, my mates just picked up a laptop for £100 and its absolutely smothered with virus's and has now ceased to load windows.

I can't re-load windows my way as it doesn't have a floppy drive and i need one the way i do things.

Basically, its got XP home SP1, it'll go past the loading screen with the green bar, bring up a black screen with a mouse cursor and thats pretty much where it stops. The mouse cursor will go around teh screen, but CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't work so i can't get an explorer window open, and right click doesn't do much so i'm pretty much stumped.

Any ideas?

Thanks guys,
Sly.

[Hybr!d]

If you have a Windows CD you can boot off of it and don't need a floppy.

[slyboogie]

hi,
i don't have a copy really :\ i have the reload disc that came with my time pc but it won't work on the laptop. Is it legal to download XP seeing as i have a legitimate serial number and my mates laptop has too?

It's just i know your allowed to download music and stuff if you have purchased the original copy.

[Hybr!d]

Na, it's still illegal.

Did you buy the laptop new?

It should have come with some form of recovery CD.

[slyboogie]

Hi,
no it was second hand, he was a tw@ for buying it if i'm honest, he knew it had loads of virus's and i knew i'd get stuck with fixing it

Anything you can think of i can try? if i can just get windows explorer to open i can sort out the virus's. Probably anyway.

[evilfantasy]

Will it start in safe mode?

If it has any sort of antivirus on it you can maybe get rid of enough virus in safe mode to get windows to load all the way.

[Hybr!d]

I'd suggest starting a new thread in the Virus forum and seeing if you can clean it up.

Other than that you will need to buy XP Home, it's only £45 so it's not the end of the world.