System Restore and Recovery Questions

[Xyzzzy]

Alright so another computer problem has come my way, once again because of my not so competent step siblings.

This time I went to my dads house for a weekend, and came back to plenty of trojans, trojan downloaders, and of course the best of all, porn adware

When scanning for the 5th time,with the 5th program, A-Squared Free, I as usual found a ton of new viruses. At the end of the scan I quarantined them and windows immeadiatly reset to default settings and then my computer shut down. Upon reboot Windows XP will boot, but only until the log in screen where it then goes black and does nothing.

Obviously being a family computer there are lots of important pictures, documents, etc. etc. (+ my pr0n stash). My main concern is recovering these files from the hard drive before I reformat it.

My question would be about system recovery, it says it copies user created data files (jpeg, mpeg, mp3, mp4, wma's etc) but I just want to be sure that this will work, because I've learned not to trust my computer.

Anyone with experience, or knows of a way of accessing my data by other means please let me know.

[Sacchin]

System recovery saves every few days/weeks often doesn't it? You mean the "Pick a restoration date" option? That always helps me and everything is still there.

[Love]

safe mode > save on flash/burn in disk > wipe and enjoy your fresh system.

OR

decent antivirus > detect and unfuk everything. your system is likely to have problems but it will be safer to store your files once your pc is clean at which point you can wipe your disk and enjoy a fresh windows install.

[Heosphoros]

So your unable to even get into the start menu/desktop or anything?

[Love]

System recovery saves every few days/weeks often doesn't it? You mean the "Pick a restoration date" option? That always helps me and everything is still there.

viruses often laugh at system recovery but it does help from time to time.

[Mirosuke]

try the "safe mode" to get in to backup your files + pr0nz?

System recovery saves every few days/weeks often doesn't it? You mean the "Pick a restoration date" option? That always helps me and everything is still there.

Well, if he can gets on. Anyways, isn't that suppoused to save only when u Install something on your pc?

[EvGa]

Try safe mode, press F8 repeatedly while it boots.

Put the hard drive in another PC and grab the files off it. <-easiest.

[Heosphoros]

Try safe mode, press F8 repeatedly while it boots.

Put the hard drive in another PC and grab the files off it. <-easiest.

i was thinking the same thing. But be carefull, you might infect that computer too.

[Xyzzzy]

safe mode doesnt show windows either
no restore points =/

[EvGa]

Do you have another pc or a friends/relatives pc you could borrow/go use for a few hours? Hook up your hard drive to their PC, and take all the pictures and things you want off it and burn them to DVD/CD/flash drive. AND/OR try to scan the drive from their pc to get rid of the virus/problem.

Be sure they have up to date virus protection and what not. Although, if it is something screwing with the OS, it probably won't "Jump" over to their pc as long as you don't run any programs from yours.

I've never used a recovery console to save files.

[Xyzzzy]

Its too late =/

My stepdad came through while I was at school and just reformatted it -.-

[EvGa]

NOT THE PORNZ!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Love]

NOT THE PORNZ!!!!!!!!!!!!