Comp won't fully boot

[Trotter]

I have only spent one evening on it, and the vast majority of that was sitting and letting it scan. It only has an old Celly in it and 512MB, so it is rather slow. I could pull the hard drive and drop it in mine rig as a secondary and scan it faster, but I don't see a need for it.

Considering the computer worked before we started working on it, it has to be something that has been done thus far. I seriously doubt the AV or Spybot have done it, so that leaves the updates and or a combination of it all together. I'll know better when i get to go back over and work on it, probably Friday evening.

 

[Jorsoft]

It's been my experience in situations like this that the daughter would've downloaded a bug again--possibly the same one. I'd get this man an AV different than Panda, too. I've had some truly awful experiences with that software. Even AVG is preferable in my opinion.

Remove as much stuff as you possibly can from MSOCNFIG, too, and start from there. It's tough to pinpoint something like this if the PC isn't right in front of you.

 

[EricB]

didn't you say that the computer won't boot? do you have an erd commander cd?

 

[Trotter]

It will boot to desktop, icons and all, as well as a fully movable cursor. But then it hangs for an eternity. Launch something, and it takes a couple of minutes to happen, and takes a looooong time to finally open up.

I sent him home today with some instructions to boot to safe4 mode, scan with Panda and HouseCall, as well as Spybot. Go into Add/Remove Programs, chack Show Updates, and uninstall the updates that were done that night. After all of that, defrag. He may get it done tonight, but I doubt it. Either way, I am headed over there on Friday.

Yes, I have ERD Commander. One version of it anyway. Your thoughts?

 

[KSoD]

ERD can do all sorts of stuff. I have not tried it but i know Eric has stated that this can be used as a recovery tool. Maybe a back up tool as well.? He will have to answer that.

 

[EricB]

ERD can do all sorts of stuff. I have not tried it but i know Eric has stated that this can be used as a recovery tool. Maybe a back up tool as well.? He will have to answer that.

all of that and some.

but one of it most important tools is that it can do system restores on unbootable computers. whenever I get an unbootable computer, I put the erd cd in and do a system restore to a month before their computer had issues. this is to ensure the it will restore to a working system. this I run viruses and spyware scans

 

[Trotter]

Hmmm... didn't know it could do that. But I have only used it once. I may have to dig my disk out. Hopefully I won't need it for this one, but you never know.

 

[ECTech]

in a situation like that i'd do some basic cleanup then move right to spinrite. most of the time on older machines that i've worked on, it turns out to be a hardware issue rather then a software issue.

post a log and i'll take a look.