Hi A mate of mine asked me to repair his acer laptop. Windows loads very slowly, programs won’t uninstall, network wizard, system restore don’t work & if I try to load an Av or AS they won’t run but will install. I previously removed several nasties installed avast then he installed mcafee at same time & then somehow removed them. I don’t have a xp boot disc ( I have my acer erecovery disc) at hand so what approach could I take to recover this disaster? Thanks Lyn
The Acer Recovery discs should properly recover the system to its original state, can’t you use them?
but I think he means this: he has a recovery disc of his own acer laptop, but not of his mate’s acer laptop… am I right?
If the recovery disc belongs to your laptop, I am not sure if you can use it on other laptops, because of drivers, but also because OEM’s license image of windows OS are bounded to a particular hardware…
There are many ways, here is my way:
[1] Try format the disc and put an image of xp on it, you can find xp images very easy on the net these days… (:WIN) (be careful! you want to get rid of malware, but some xp images contain malware!)
[2] make sure before you actually install the image on the harddrive, you find all drivers of the current laptop and save them on a extern medium. There are also programs you can use that track down all the drivers on your system and back them up!
[3] install the image on the hardrive and install all the drivers for the laptop.
[4] download all windows updates, this includes all 3 service packs of windows xp!
[5] slipstream your current system setup with alll the drivers and updates to a new image and burn it to a dvd! this is now your own recovery DVD!
[6] In the mean time when using the laptop, let your mate make back-ups of his important files and documents using Comodo Back -UP for example…
[7] next time your mate screws stuff up, you can use that recovery dvd en the back-ups to bring stuff back to normal!!!
Hope this helps you fixing the pc of your mate!
EDIT:
Ofcourse, you have to tell your friend, when you restored his pc, to install proper security to prevent this from happening again… Install CIS on his system! and of course many additional other on demand antimalware scanners… and using CRC and other optimization programs would not be a bad idea also… (:WIN)
I got that impression too, however, I wasn’t sure.
I agree, it’s very unlikely that recovery discs from another Acer PC would work. Maybe not even if it’s the same model, because of OEM licensing.
My tip, if there are no discs for the PC, would be looking at www.acer.com or www.google.com how to restore the system from the hidden PQSERVICE partition. I think most Acers (if not all) has this hidden partition, and you should be able to boot from it somehow, using it like recovery CD:s. This is however something unknown for me. I do have the PQSERVICE partition but I’ve never attempted to use it. I’m not even 100% sure that it works withoug recovery CD:s.
Thanks for advice looks like I’m in for a long session.
If you have 2 computers try this:
Download a portable antivirus or antispyware that you can run on a USB, (not that I can mention anyone but they exists). Heck download 2-3 scanners and UPDATE THEM, to make sure it finds the most.
Start the infected computer in Safemode (usually by pressing f5 or f8 or f10 or f12 at boot), and put in the USB with the portable scanners and try to run the antivirus/anti spyware.
Hopefully it/they will find many pests, or those giving your computer a hard time and delete them.
Also put the CCleaner in that USB and run it in safemode, let it scan and remove everything it finds (just to speed up the computer) make sure it scans the registry too (remove everything). Then use windows delete programs and remove unnecessary softwares (those not used in a long time, will probably speed up the comp a little too).
Then read http://www.blackviper.com/WinXP/servicecfg.htm and disable unnecessary services to speed things up even more… (if you use vista click this link instead: http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm )
Hopefully you be running in rocket speed after that.
Or you can read this Microsoft Windows Tweaks, Tips and How-To Articles to speed things up even more.
Hi I managed to run drweb live cd then things started to look up! I’ve removed several nasties with nod, avira, sas, mbam any other scans I should try? Now the bad news everything from screen icons, web pages to progarm popup boxes are stretched & out of focus! Web pages also scroll poorly jerky. Ive look in device manager it seems vga drivers have been deleted what can I do now the laptop is an acer 1680. Thanks lyn
What about trying CIS? With Defense+ you can isolate and kill malicious processes, then delete the .exe files.
As for vga drivers you can find them on the internet and reinstall.
Trying to find them but they wont download. It seems that acers own video drivers have been deleted and now using windows generic ones. Would it be best if I contact acer before downloading a bios zip?
Hi Banging my head against a wall here. It would seem I have removed the malware unfortunately when I enter device manager hardware mass storage controller driver & video controller vga compatible driver have both been uninstalled any help appreciated.
Hm, if you can’t download the proper drivers and install them, I don’t really know what to do. :-\
Am I right in thinking that I may have the right driver from acer? His laptop has vga ati driver so Im now downloading one from acer ati 9700 vga driver.
If you think it’s the right driver, I’m sure it’s no problem whether you get it from Acer or ATI.
What model number and type is the lappy lyn?
eg acer aspire 5010
Sorry seen it know,try going to [url=http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_1610.html]http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_1680.html[/url] to find drivers
Now I am mad the thing shows windows then goes black! A mate of mine has an xp disc would reinstalling windows solve this? Thanks
Hm… did you successfully install the drivers? Despite that, it’s all black? When is it black, can you log in to the desktop and then it turns black?
I’m not sure* the vga drivers are included with a Windows XP disc, so you might need what you’ve downloaded, after all.
- My XP disc does not included vga drivers, but on the other hand it’s heavily tweaked so I’m not sure what goes for an original CD.
They woulnt install some error msg saying too many characters something like that. It starts but after windows display not login screen goes black. I can start os and get safe mode option but when I choose it multi(0)rdisk(0)partion etc is displayed continuously. Ps As long as I get this machine going again be with an xp disk or not he can take it to a shop to have the original graphics problem fixed.
Hm, I’m sorry, I don’t seem to understand what this is about really. ???
If only your friend had an Acer Recovery solution, that would solve everything, unless there’s some hardware problem of course. :THNK
Thanks gonna reinstall xp if the graphics problem is that is still problematic I’ll tell him to contact acer or visit a repair shop. Lyn
OK. Good luck, I hope it all works out.