I cannot access ANYTHING. I get a three-colored box: blue/white/grey.... The bottom gives me the choice of either "Send Error Report" or "Don't Send" This box appears no matter what I try to open... MS Word, a JPEG document, Internet... anything Sometimes I get "DrWatson Portmortem Debugger has encountered a problem...." Other tiems I get "Internet Explorer has encountered a problem..."
Please help. Have I lost my data? I don't care about the programs.... but the data is critical (e.g. ms word files)
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> I can get a HD and put the existing one on an external, if that's what's necessary... I just need the data!
That's what I would do, take the hd out, put a new one in, load the recovery disk cd (hopefully) supplied with the pc onto the new hd, then load up malware detectors, turn off the Service that Autoruns anything from a removable drive, then plug the old hard drive in and run scans on it.
You can boot that machine to Knoppix live cd to transfer your data off to removable media
http://www.knoppix.net/
a repair install can help you out; here for XP (since you did not mention any OS) : http://www.michaelstevenst
once you get your data, you can start testing /repairing
That sounds suspiciously like registry alterations caused by adware and malware. Run a malware remover, such as Adaware.com (http://www.lavasoft.com/p
This will first remove the adware and malware, then fix your registry so that your programs run when called.
ok...... Thank you all for your comments. I'm a bit overwhelmed. Here's a summary of what I'm hearing...
1) SFC / scannow... I tried this with no success. Computer gives same messages.
2) www.knoppix.net. What does this do, exactly?
3) Booting in safe mode. Computer boots, but, again, I get the error messages when I try to do ANYTHING!
4) I've tried ad-aware before and it's not free. Is there an alternative? Can I run Registry Mechanic without Ad-Aware?
5) http://www.michaelstevenst
Am I pulling off the "corrupted" HD and putting it on an external device via USB?
Finally, this is an IBM thinkpad.
>Am I pulling off the "corrupted" HD and putting it on an external device via USB?
That's what I think you should do (as mentioned earlier). See article on disabling Autorun for USB.
http://support.microsoft.c
The files might not be corrupted - it might simply be just the part of the hard drive that is accessed when it is booted from that is corrupted.
Before copying files from that disk I would advise running a virus check. This is not just to prevent the virus from spreading, but it is annoying to start copying data from the slave to the host and keep having the copy process aborted by a virus being found which means that the copy process has to be restarted.
Ad-aware is free. There is also a trial pay version, but I prefer the free one:
Ad-aware Anti-Malware: http://download.cnet.com/A
Give software choices a try before resorting to disassembling your computer.
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by: ralphwalkerdjPosted on 2009-10-17 at 12:30:03ID: 25597111
Thank you. I guess I just hope to be reassured that I won't lost all of my files. I can get a HD and put the existing one on an external, if that's what's necessary... I just need the data! Thank you!!!