techy help

[PANZERCATWAGON]

my dad tells me the other day that he cant log onto the pc. so i tried and, sure enough, every time you log in you just get logged straight back out again. obviously theres some kind of virus on it or something.

ive been using a pc at work to look up what i can do about it and i cant find anything that doesnt involve using the original installation cd, which i dont have. so i asked my boss about it and he said he had a vista installation cd i could use. so now i popped that in yesterday and everything was fine, until it said something about the file system being fat32 when it needs to be ntfs. i cant get onto the pc to change that so im gonna have to find these drivers from somewhere that it says i can put on through usb.

im really fucking fed up now i cant be bothered to keep using other peoples pcs just to sort out my own. i cant find these drivers and i wouldnt normally care but i need the fucking internet and my computer for work.

if anyone knows where i can find these drivers or any other useful information i might need to know that would be grand. or even if theres anything else i can do to just get a fucking operating system on there.

[LeetFidle]

PANZERCATWAGON! YAYAYAYYAYAYA.

Sorry i cant really help you but

YAYYAYAYAA

[Lapis Lazuli]

PANZERCATWAGON! YAYAYAYYAYAYA.

Sorry i cant really help you but

YAYYAYAYAA

Enjoy your warning.

Panzercatwagon, does the Windows Vista CD allow you to reformat the PC so that it uses NTFS?

[jrgp]

PANZERCATWAGON! YAYAYAYYAYAYA.

Sorry i cant really help you but

YAYYAYAYAA

Enjoy your warning.

Panzercatwagon, does the Windows Vista CD allow you to reformat the PC so that it uses NTFS?

Just boot to the Vista cd and delete your existing XP partition and have it create and use (install vista in) an NTFS one in it's place. It'll probably do that anyway.

[Lapis Lazuli]

PANZERCATWAGON! YAYAYAYYAYAYA.

Sorry i cant really help you but

YAYYAYAYAA

Enjoy your warning.

Panzercatwagon, does the Windows Vista CD allow you to reformat the PC so that it uses NTFS?

Just boot to the Vista cd and delete your existing XP partition and have it create and use (install vista in) an NTFS one in it's place. It'll probably do that anyway.

That was my advice, but he stated some sort of difficulty with that solution.

[koingnegsegg]

I have the answer
Sadly my answer involes losing all your data.
go on someone elses computer and download Ubuntu Disk image.
Burn it to a cd and pop it in.
Load up Ubuntu, but dont install it.
go to the top left and on one of the drop down menus it has the partition editor.
open it up and make a ntfs partition of your whole hard drive.


OR you could download Gparted and use that instead of Ubuntu. It would take a considerable amount less time to download.

[blackdevil0742]

There are some boot OS:es that let you change the admin password.
This might give you some good help: http://www.adminspy.com/Windows-Tips/forgot-windows-password.html

[JupiterShadow]

Had you tried removing the CMOS battery and putting back in again after 10 minutes?

[jrgp]

Had you tried removing the CMOS battery and putting back in again after 10 minutes?

That won't have any effect on whether or not he can change his partitions, windows password, or reinstalling windows, unless his motherboard had settings preventing him from booting from an optical drive, which most likely is not the case since he mentioned that he got to the vista installation process.

The only thing that taking out the motherboard battery for a certain amount of time then putting it back in does is reset the clock and restore the bios' settings to their default factory settings.

[Lapis Lazuli]

Had you tried removing the CMOS battery and putting back in again after 10 minutes?

That won't have any effect on whether or not he can change his partitions, windows password, or reinstalling windows, unless his motherboard had settings preventing him from booting from an optical drive, which most likely is not the case since he mentioned that he got to the vista installation process.

The only thing that taking out the motherboard battery for a certain amount of time then putting it back in does is reset the clock and restore the bios' settings to their default factory settings.

Which is a neat way to reset a BIOS password, but some systems can hold a charge for upwards of 20 hours after power has been removed, which is a long time to wait.

PANZERCATWAGON, what's the word? Did the Vista installation CD allow you to reformat?

go on someone elses computer and download Ubuntu Disk image.
Burn it to a cd and pop it in.
Load up Ubuntu, but dont install it.
go to the top left and on one of the drop down menus it has the partition editor.
open it up and make a ntfs partition of your whole hard drive.

OR you could download Gparted and use that instead of Ubuntu. It would take a considerable amount less time to download.

This is a fine solution as well, though if you don't have access to another PC with a CD Burner, you can order an Ubuntu CD for free, provided you don't mind waiting.

[FliesLikeABrick]

Being logged off as soon as logging on is classic virus activity, resetting passwords will not help that.

If there is an XP sticker on the side of the computer with your license code, I can give you a copy of an XP cd that should work with it.  I mention this because it is perfectly legal, he would be using his own license key and he legally owns a copy of XP if it has that sticker.

Post here and PM me if you have the XP sticker with the license code.

[PANZERCATWAGON]

sorry i didnt reply for ages i havent been able to get much access to the internet

koinegsegg that looks like a good idea i might try that

lapis i havent been able to get any further with the disc at the moment because it just says the same thing still and i havent been able to find those drivers

flies, yes it is a legal version of windows xp and i have the lisence code and all that. thanks for the offer but i think you live in america or some other place so dont worry. i think ill just go for the ubuntu idea.

just one other question, can this ubuntu disc run from booting up because i still cant stay logged in to run it from there.

[SadistAtHeart]

just one other question, can this ubuntu disc run from booting up because i still cant stay logged in to run it from there.

Yes that's how you install it. Boot with the Ubuntu disc and everything else should be fairly self-explanatory.

On the odd chance that you don't know how to boot from CD, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzrhxXYqB50&feature=related should help.

[Blue-ninja]

There's another method that involves being able to fix the computer and keeping all your data, but this one is a lot harder to do.

I'll say stick with the partitioning, unless you're afraid of losing all your nazi-porn (and soldat maps).

[DarkNoddy]

Formatting and losing all data is the LAST RESORT, unless you dont have anything of interest/value on the disk AND you wanted to reinstall anyway, you should avoid doing so.

The system being fat32 and not ntfs means you have to format the disk, this doesnt mean you have to lose all data on it though. You can quite easily (though somewhat risky) partition out the free space on the disk to a partition of its own, then moving all data to keep, and format the other one etc.

Anyhow, have you tried starting XP in safe mode? (just hammer f8 duing startup, before the "windows XP loading" screen appears)
if you can start safe mode, you should be good, download and run Hijackthis run the scan to file, then upload / paste the file here so we can have a look at it. Dont remove anything, being in the list doesnt mean spyware/virus.

If safemode doesnt work, I'd probably reinstall XP regardless of the login issue.

One thing you can try if you like is to hold ctrl alt shift after clicking on the image or inputting password or whatever when logging in, this should halt the "startup" from the start menu, though I doubt it will make a difference.

Going to the extreme you could destroy the program that shuts down windows using a live cd to access the filesystem, though it would probably be easier to use the live cd to boot to some filesystem, ubuntu or some other distro is a good alternative, and then copy all your files and other stuff you want to keep, onto a different device and then format and reinstall.

Dunno if this is helpfull, post any questions regarding what I said and I'll reply as soon as I can.

 - good luck xD