Formatting Windows XP

fun4a11

I have a laptop from my College but they only gave me a login with limited access so I hacked into the laptop to find out the Administrator password so I could make my account a Administrator. I never had any problems but a few months ago I downloaded a torrent that was filled with Viruses and Malware.

I couldn't open anything even in safe mode but after two full days of working on it I finally got it working again after using ComboFix but it came at a compromise. The laptop will load at normal speed until I login then it takes about 10mins to load up all the other software. I tried taking most of the programs away from starting up. I have run ComboFix, Ad-Aware and AVG a few times and none have them have solved the problem of the very slow start up. I sometimes get a 'Visual Studio Just-in-Time Debugger' coming up saying there is a problem with explorer.exe.

So I have come to the conclusion that I need to format my Laptop, I have done this before on other computers by using a pirated version of Windows or had to use a pirated product key to get it working. My plan was to get rid of all the software before I left the laptop back but formatting could hamper this. When ComboFix ran it installed 'Windows Recovery Console' on the laptop. Would I be correct in saying that this will keep the all the drivers and keep a genuine copy of Windows?

Or does anyone have any other advice?

FloatingVoter

As a smart guy like you knows...pirates have forums too. Ask them.

MiCr0

there's so much wrong with the OP's request here.
thread locked