Ballsed XP

[Pannonian]

I'm not sure what cause the original crack in my XP install, with an upgrade of Firefox and the attempted removal of Wavepad being possible culprits, both involving installing something or clicking on an exe file. Whatever the reason, when I tried to remove Wavepad, it told me it was installing Adobe Acrobat 7.0 (for some reason), which was already on my machine. I let the c drive access go on for a while, but something clicked in my brain when I checked My Computer and noticed a load of space had been "freed up" on my c drive. It turned out a load of stuff had been deleted. Since then, I've managed to recover some data, though not all. For a while, every time I opened a folder, the Acrobat install would start up again, and another few MB would disappear. That's stopped since I've uninstalled Acrobat.

I'm not sure if there are still any holes left in my install, and if so, I'd like to repair it. I don't have the installation CD, but I do have the I386 folder, and I do have the reg key. How do I check if my install is healthy, and if not, how do I repair it? I've not enabled system backup in the past.

[Whacker]

You need to run a virus scan first, using a quality virus scanner. Then run a few antispyware scans using MS Antispyware (Defender), Spybot, and Adaware. Make sure those come up clean after several runs each before we proceed further.

[Ramses II CP]

Not to disagree, but I wouldn't bother with Adaware at this point. Spybot simply works better and annoys the average user less.

AVG is the free anti-virus of my choice, though with the latest version you have to turn off an annoying 'feature' or two. You can get it here:

http://free.avg.com/

[Pannonian]

I've done a full run of AVG free, which came up clean, Adaware, which came up with half a dozen adware or cookies, and Spybot, which came up with a couple of dozen, mainly adware and cookies, but also a trojan. I'll run Spybot again on restart until it comes up clean.

The strange thing about this episode is that, other than a subfolder in MyDocuments, AFAICS the only areas affected have been MS applications. The System Tools have been deleted, My Office install is wrecked, and my VB install is wrecked, which means a helluva job digging out those CDs again.

[Pannonian]

I've done two runs each of AVG free and Spybot, and the second run of each has been clean. What next?

[Ramses II CP]

Interesting that Spybot caught a trojan and AVG didn't, but the next step is to test for system stability. Did removing the trojan restore your access to your files by any chance? Have you lost critical files that you want to recover before we proceed with a Windows repair?

When was your last backup?

Anyway, assuming you're still missing a chunk of files I'd install an undelete application and try to recover any mission critical files. Not Windows files, you can't usually undelete them functionally, files that are personally important. Recover what you can and then back up all of the data you want to keep. Since we don't know how broken Windows might be I wouldn't make any assumptions about being able to preserve the data on the drive during the recovery process.

Here's an undelete application I've used:

http://undelete-plus.com/

[Pannonian]

I used GetDataBack to recover some of the data files I lost. Windows seems ok now, but Office and VB need repairing and/or reinstalling. The other applications seem ok - most of the losses seem to have been from the Startmenu, so I've repaired their loss by pointing the shortcuts back at the actual apps. It still feels a bit strange that Office and VB were the apps to feel the main brunt of this.

I've tried googling for Acrobat, virus, and windows installer, but I've not found anything that matches what happened.

[Pannonian]

I've pinpointed it. I installed Wavepad, a sound editor with fairly good reviews. However, after a trial, I decided to uninstall. Once the uninstall process is run, either uninst.exe or from Add/Remove programs, it starts deleting files from my hard disk. It's done so again, luckily this time not from my boot disk, so I can relatively easily retrieve my data.

http://www.baidumsg.com/malwareremov...val_33354.html

Edit: http://www.spywareinfoforum.com/lofi...hp/t75505.html

[Ramses II CP]

That's an interesting error. It seems like a strange strategy for a company to pursue, and I have to wonder if it isn't just a badly made uninstaller. Years ago Bungie released a game called Myth II which had an incorrectly configured installer that would attempt to 'uninstall' the whole C drive when run. The recall on that game is a large part of why they had to sell out. That does sort of explain the AVG and Spybot results, since it doesn't function like a classic virus or trojan, but has some elements of the latter in a non-self spreading context.

Anyway, if Windows is running okay now you probably just need to repair/reinstall those applications. OpenOffice is also a good option if you can't find your Office 2kx disks. You should probably run chkdsk at this point (Right click on the affected drive, select the tools tab, and hit check now) as well since it's difficult from those reports to tell exactly what files are going to be affected by this app.

Good luck!

[Pannonian]

Something else that's odd. Ad Aware's aawservice.exe keeps reappearing immediately after I kill it in Task Manager. Winpatrol tells me it's safe, but I'm suspicious of anything that reappears after I kill it.

[Pannonian]

Is it possible to download the older MS products? I've found the documentation for my VB 2003, but not the disks, and MS pushes the download of the newer MS products, but I can't find the older ones on their site. Do they archive their older products for download, and if so, where would I find them?

PS. the serial number's on the documentation (I think), so I'm ok there. I just need the CDs.

[TosaInu]

Hello Pannonian,

Does this one help: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/P...displaylang=en

[Pannonian]

Hello Pannonian,

Does this one help: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/P...displaylang=en

Thanks for that, but it seems to be a list of search results, with service packs and stuff to the fore rather than the actual products themselves. I spoke to the MS people about replacement disks, and they didn't even have anything related to VB. I guess I'll have to rummage around for those disks after all.

[TosaInu]

Hello Pannonian,

Visual basic is a free distribution? What exactly do you need? vb2003.net? I happen to have a pile of CD's that came with magazines. Those that are stacked with trial-, free-, shareware, scripts and essentials. It might be on one of those.