Computer experts help required

[scott64]

Hi children here for weekend, bless them they have managed to get laptop infected with isass.exe which I understand to be a nasty virus. Luckily had important stuff backed up, but it will not boot to windows not even get to repair consul etc. So is it possible to run virus software to boot and scan system. I can not seem to find any, cheers

[cronk-flakes]

i think if you buy norton anti-virus you can put it in the cd-drive and boot from the cd to do a scan.... but i could be mistaken, so dont go out and buy it on my account. I'm almost 95% sure you can.

[victormeldrew]

Can you get into the BIOS and disable boot from hard disk, force it to boot from CD, and boot from your Windows CD to do a repair?

[scott64]

rebbots itself before you can get to repair consul. I guess a nukeing of hard drive and reload is just minutes away!!

[tallbloke]

keep hitting function key f8 as you switch on, that should get you into the bios where you can set the boot order menu to boot from cd instead of hard drive. Then Boot from a windows recovery cd or norton cd.

If it's not f8 it should tell you the right key to press when you turn it on.

[victormeldrew]

Probably F1, F2, DEL or ESC. F8 is trapped by Windows which is too late, a boot sector virus will already be trapping keyboard input by then.

[victormeldrew]

PS if you really can't get to the BIOS via keybaord then try diconnecting your keyboard before you boot. You will be directed to the BIOS after the infamous "Keyboard missing - press F1 to enter BIOS" oxymoronic message. Failing that whip open the case and pull the data connector or power lead off the hard drive and reboot.

[tallbloke]

victormeldrew said:

Probably F1, F2, DEL or ESC. F8 is trapped by Windows which is too late, a boot sector virus will already be trapping keyboard input by then.

Yep, quite right, my mishtake. Dell often uses f12 I think.

[scott64]

can boot from cd put norton disc in but only checks cd drive as A:? which seems odd can not access c: drive from prompt?

[madras]

You can try and boot up to the Last Known good from the boot up screen. Then download AVG free antivirus s/w and run a scan.
If you cannot get this far, you could try and boot with the XP CD and try a repair - rarely works.
Or you could boot to xp CD and reinstall windows in a diff directory, eg WINXP. This way you'll keep your personal stuff on the HDD but have a new OS installed. Then you can download AVG and run a virus scan. You will of course need to reinstall all your s/w as it will be like have a new build. You should delete the old C:WINDOWS, or whatever it was called after.

If you have spyware on your PC, you will need to rebuild anyway, I'd think, it'll never be the same again. So if you have stuff backed up then you could just rebuild, after a full format.

[scott64]

Thanks for the help but enough was enough so re formatted and re-loaded. Kids been given strict instructions!!