Wednesday, March 30th, 2005

It's 10:21 PM and I just finished working on a Toshiba laptop running Windows XP Home Edition. When I first turned this machine on over eight hours ago (no, I have not been working on it all that time) the first sign of a problem was when I attempted to access the cd drive so that I could install some software. Clicking on the My Computer and Control Panel icons crashed the system. I rebooted and tried to Explore the Start Menu by right clicking on the Start button and choosing Explore. This also froze the machine. I rebooted in Safe Mode and removed any suspicious start up items.

The next step was to figure out how to get the proper tools on the machine so I could clean the troubled computer. A floppy disk would not work. Then I thought about a thumb drive. I loaded Microsoft Anti-spy and AVG Anti-virus onto the thumb drive, booted into Safe Mode and copied the applications to the laptop. Then I rebooted and installed both of them.

In total there were almost 300 virus infections and almost 900 spyware/adware related problems. The software didn't detect them in one shot either. First I ran the software without the update virus defintions and spyware signatures, just to get the machine to a point that I could work with it. Then I had to reboot, re-run the software, reboot, find and fix more problems etc... This went on for quite some time.

When I felt that the machine was at a working level I logged in to the user's account to see if I could access the Control Panel or My Computer. The answer was no. I ran sfc /scannow, chkdisk and didn't find any problems. After some searching, I came up with a few possibilities; one was that it was Windows XP Service Pack 2 which was causing the problem. I debated uninstalling it but decided I would try other options first. Then I stumbled across a post in an online forum that gave a recommendation to solve this very problem. The user said to open Internet Explorer, then choose Tools and under Tools choose the Advanced tab. Under Advanced, I had to find the setting that read "Enable third party browser extensions", I deselected and closed down Internet Explorer. The computer also had an update ready to be installed so I took care of that as well. When I rebooted and clicked on My Computer I was plesently surprised to find that it worked! I am not sure if it was the Internet Explorer setting or installing the update that did it. Either way, I was happy to have found the solution. I pulled AdAware off the CD and installed. Back to removing the pests.

After several virus scans, usually finding 1 or 2, a few spyware scans finding 60-122 infected objects I removed all System Restore Points and created a new one. I rebooted and scanned several times and found nothing. The next step was to install a firewall, connect to my network and update all the software I installed, which I did. I ran a virus scan again and found another 60 or so viruses. Spyware scans revealed some problems as well.

Finally, after several scans the software was reporting a clean machine! I defragged, cleaned up any files I left on the desktop and filled out the invoice. I will return the laptop tomorrow - overnight computer repair - how often can you find that service?

Tomorrow I have a networking issue to solve, I have to drop off the 60 cds that hold the converted training video I had been working on, drop the laptop and put more flyers out to advertise. Friday, I have two clients set up before noon.

I have made great progress on the Welcome Kitchen Catering website. The site should be going up with a few weeks. I am awaiting the client to give the go ahead on purchasing a web host.