Is it banjaxed?

Westfalia2

Hi there,

I got some nasty virus on my laptop about a month ago and it got slower and slower and now pretty much won't do anything. For example, I've been trying to close a Word doc for an hour. I just cannot afford the €65 per hour I've been quoted to get it looked at and was wondering if it's too late to get something like Norton AntiVirus and try to run it? I tried downloading the AVG antivirus just after catching the virus but no joy. I'm wondering if anyone who's familiar with these problems thinks this sounds like a lost cause?

Yes, I fully admit I should have had better protection - next time!

Many thanks.

francosp

Westfalia2 wrote: »

Hi there,

I got some nasty virus on my laptop about a month ago and it got slower and slower and now pretty much won't do anything. For example, I've been trying to close a Word doc for an hour. I just cannot afford the €65 per hour I've been quoted to get it looked at and was wondering if it's too late to get something like Norton AntiVirus and try to run it? I tried downloading the AVG antivirus just after catching the virus but no joy. I'm wondering if anyone who's familiar with these problems thinks this sounds like a lost cause?

Yes, I fully admit I should have had better protection - next time!

Many thanks.

hi,

I fix problems like this in my spare time and one of the first things I do is run a house call housecall.trendmicro.com

See what that throws up. If you have something nasty house call usually finds it & "usually" removes it. The bit where Word was taking an hour to close down is not really that unusual for any Windows system, it is Windohz after all. If your sick of waiting just open the task manager. Right click taskbar => task manager => process' and find and END the WORD.exe process, that should shut it down for you.

You also may want to try defrag your disk, do a disk clean up and disable any unwanted programs from starting up by running msconfig and disabling some services in the startup tab to try and speed up performance. Also, Hijack this a program you should d/load, run and post the output in the relevant forums to find some other "expert" help.

I can't really give you any other advice without seeing the laptop myself.

And if all else fails, then you may have to dig out your recovery disk and do a fresh install.

Good Luck !

kikel

No, It'll be ok.

Download malware bytes. It's FREE. If ya can't access the internet get someone to downlaod it for you and put it on CD\memory stick. That should get your computer running again. Then you should be able to download AVG 8.5 (just launched today) Run that and that should be most of your problems fixed.

There is a forum for this stuff here.
http://boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1009

Alanstrainor

MOved from Laptops.

Westfalia2

This is going to make me sound technically incompetent but I can't even get onto the web with it. I can see the icons on my desktop but no more than that. Word opened once then wouldn't close again. I thought (don't laugh) that if I had an actual disk rather than downloading virus protection software I might have some chance of it doing something.

OK, you can laugh now.

Westfalia2

Sorry Kikel - didn't see the link you'd posted. I'll try that. Many thanks.

Sparkicks

you can do a quick and dirty version which basicly lets you manually disable things from running on start up.
Go start run msconfig and in general if you chose diagnostic startup and restart it will probably run a lot faster. From there you can run any anti virus programs although certain things might be disabled.
If you're willing to spend the time once everything is disabled go look up all the startup programs and disable the ones you know of that you don't need such as messengering programs or certain utilities that like to have a quick launch feature installed that you know you've installed. select hide microsoft services in the services tab
Thats general tab for the quick disable majority
and services tab with microsoft ones hidden
startup tab
most google results will show you what it is and if it can be safely disabled

humaxf1

The OP is basically saying that the laptop is running like a pig, I dont think there is much point installing he likes of malwarebytes etc etc which will prob make it run even slower.

An alternative option would be to whip the hard drive out and connect it to a PC. Then run a scan from there. Naturally you need to know what you're doing and have the appropiate cables etc.

To the OP, all is not lost. To sort your laptop ->

A thourough virus<->malware scan/disabling nasty startup items/defrag MAY resolve issues

OR

last resort, a reinstall will definately sort things out effectively restoring Windows back to the day you took the laptop out of the box. A reinstall can be a bit drastic at times, but can be beneficial at the same time because all the Windows system file ROT is eliminated.

daftdave

humaxf1 wrote: »

The OP is basically saying that the laptop is running like a pig, I dont think there is much point installing he likes of malwarebytes etc etc which will prob make it run even slower.

An alternative option would be to whip the hard drive out and connect it to a PC. Then run a scan from there. Naturally you need to know what you're doing and have the appropiate cables etc.

To the OP, all is not lost. To sort your laptop ->

A thourough virus<->malware scan/disabling nasty startup items/defrag MAY resolve issues

OR

last resort, a reinstall will definately sort things out effectively restoring Windows back to the day you took the laptop out of the box. A reinstall can be a bit drastic at times, but can be beneficial at the same time because all the Windows system file ROT is eliminated.

before that last step is taken i would ask myself is there any critical data that needs to be retrieved from the hard drive as all personal data will be lost and also do you have a driver disk or the drivers backed up on a partition , because if you dont and you do a full re-installation of the operating system then you are gonna have a bit of a pain in the ass searching for and reinstalling the drivers.

just thought i should point this out.