Thursday, August 25th, 2005

I am working on a Dell Dimension 2200.  I picked it up this afternoon.  The machine is running Windows XP Home Edition.   The complaint is that the machine won’t boot.   The first thing I did was power the machine on and press the F8 key to boot into Safe Mode.  After about five minutes of watching the hard drive activity light blink and then go off for a few minutes I impatiently decided that the machine was stalled.  Then I powered the machine down the hard way (by depressing the power button until the machine went off).  I rebooted and attempted to run Last Known Good Configuration. Again, the machine tried to boot but after five to seven minutes I decided to restart and attempt booting into Safe Mode with Command Prompt
(click here to see how to run
System Restore using the command prompt).  Then I ran chkdsk /f  to not only check the hard drive for errors but to fix them (that’s what the /f does) too.  It has been about fifteen minutes now.  I am awaiting the results.  I have a feeling that this poor computer is chock-full-of-spyware and or virus, and oh, did I mention adware?  That is my guess without actually seeing the operating system boot!
It took about forty minutes to run chkdsk. No errors reported. I am going to attempt to run Safe Mode again. Sixteen minutes later and the login screen has passed and I am looking at a black screen with the words Safe Mode lining the corners. The system isn't fully functional yet but it will be soon. The first thing I will do is to run MSCONFIG to check for suspicious start up items. The desktop has come up. I ran MSCONFIG and found many viruses, spyware and adware. For example I found Iexplor.exe (adware), Sixtypopsix.exe (spyware), syscheckbop32.exe (adware), MWSOWMON.exe (My Web Search - spyware), ms66.exe (spyware), dst.exe (virus), ssk.exe (adware) and sysnet.exe (virus). I unchecked them all and also a bunch of other suspicious files. I have rebooted the machine and I am waiting for the results. It's now 8:00. I began this adventure at 5:30. As I am still waiting I will tell you that I did not see any antivirus software configured to run at startup. But I did see Microsoft AntiSpy. If I can get the desktop up I can run AntiSpy. I am still waiting for this machine to boot. The screen is currently black and the hard drive activity light has blinked a few times but not enough to feel confident. Wait, I see the cursor arrow on the screen and more activity. This poor machine might boot after all! This an exercise in patience. Oh, I see the Windows startup screen. It's nice to see that familure blue screen! It has been ten minutes since I pressed the power button! I can honestly say that this is the longest period of time I have ever seen it take for a computer to load! It's 8:18 and I am still waiting. I am at the user login screen. After over twenty minutes I decided to reboot and start in safe mode again. System stalled - rebooting (8:29). The machine is almost functional (8:46). Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta1 is trying to load. It did not load. I had to use the Task Manager (Ctrl + Alt + Delele) to kill the process. I ran MSCONFIG again and removed a few more questionable startup items. I am rebooting back into Safe Mode to see if I have any luck (9:20).

You might be wondering why I simply don't reinstall the operating system. Well, I would have gone that route already but the owner of the computer has files that would be difficult to replace.

I have tried running System File Checker in safe mode. It failed to run. I am trying to access the Control Panel and System Restore but I am not getting any where.

It's now 10:44. I am attempting to run the Windows Recovery Console. If this doesn't work I am going to call it a night!