Compaq Presario SR1110NX
256 MB RAM (!)
Windows XP Home SP1
A family member brought me their computer in an almost unusable condition. She had been using it only in Safe Mode for over six months because of multiple infections of Spyware, trojans and who knows what. I powered it up offline and noticed immediate warnings purporting to be from Windows Security Centre about an infection by Win 32.trojan.rx - (at least I think that what was what it was called). From what I could learn about this infection, I believe it is a fake name and all the warning messages are faked also. The computer had been updated to SP2 and AVG Anti Virus and Zone Alarm had been installed but the user had recently uninstalled them in preparation for using a service to replace them from her ISP ..... probably a bad move! I can't believe that she was functioning in XP with only 256 MB of RAM, 64 MB of which is diverted for use by the integrated graphics!
I noticed that the background of the desktop was a solid red colour and basically nothing would open without excessive delays or error messages saying that xxxxxx had a problem and needed to close. I very quickly decided that the best solution was to use the recovery partition of the HDD which could be initiated by hitting F10 upon boot up. I followed this procedure after ascertaining from the family member that there was nothing of major importance on the computer anyway. I think it is generally used just for web surfing and emailing through a hotmail address. The recovery was straightforward and fairly quick and resulted in the return to a 'Day 1' condition - which unfortunately included all the junk 'enhancements' from Compaq, Norton AV and Windows XP without any updates since 2005 and with only SP1.
I thought I was home free with only Windows Updates to perform, the removal of Norton and the installation of AVG AV. I did some of that from programs loaded onto a CD and thought it was safe to then go online through my router and an ADSL connection. I managed to load a very long list of Windows Updates and got AVG up to date and then I noticed that with the network cable plugged in, the pc was very slow and kept freezing up. Offline it seems to perform better but it is still very slow. A RAM addition seems an obvious first move but there seem to be other issues. I notice from Task Manager that the CPU is almost permanently running at 100%. If I try to continue with the Windows Updates, specifically SP2, the machine just hangs on the ' searching for updates for your computer' window. I usually have to close down by pulling the plug. Is it possible that the re-install has not removed all of the 'infections'? I ran an evaulation copy of Spy Eraser from Uniblue and all it found were a couple of 'infected' cookies and instances in the registry of 'Wild Tangent' and something called 'USB Monitor'.
Should I try the restore process again? How do I fix this machine? Is extra RAM all that is needed? .... and it's obviously needed!
*Edited by rpggamergirl, Zone Advisor*
