Advent 7098

[SimonG]

Hi. As you can tell by the topic title I have an Advent 7098. It has a Windows XP Home Edition OS.

Recently, I contracted a virus on my laptop which I have struggled to get rid of, however the laptop has worked as normal, until last Saturday morning. It now goes so extremely slow that booting it can take up to an hour. I can't do a system restore under safe mode or normal mode as the virus seems to have disabled it, nor can I download anything as I can't get onto my Internet explorers.

After pretty much four whole days (I thought defragmenting might help, but 18hrs at 3% was too much to bear), I decided a system recovery might do something; however, pressing F10 only seems to bring up my boot menu. I've tried F2, F8 and F11, all to know avail. I am a complete novice when it comes to computers/laptops, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

[ChrisWJ]

Hi simon

F2 = Usualy enters Bios when pressed as soon as laptop is turned on

F10 & F11 = are boot options supplyed by the bios when pressed as soon as laptop is turned on

F8 = will give you a windows boot menu when pressed a couple of seconds after latop is turned on (might be better to keep pressing the F8 key untill you see the screen)

a good online viruse scanner I know will get rid of the virus is Housecall by microtrends, the other program that might help is called hijackthis which will stop all auto starting applications to help speed things up.

[SimonG]

Many thanks, will look into it tonight

[SimonG]

Hi Chris,

I downloaded Housecall onto my partner's laptop and saved it onto a USB Memory stick. I've now tried running it in normal mode on my laptop and after getting to 5% says there is no network connection. I'm running the internet through an ethernet cable out of the back of my laptop and not wireless, so I'm really struggling now. One other point is that Keyboard Manager is apparently "Out of Memory" according to the pop-up.

I apologise if this thread is now in the wrong section (especially as we're now talking anti-virus).

I haven't attempted hijackthis yet, but could try that this evening.

Many thanks

Si

[ChrisWJ]

ok Simon

indeed it sounds like their may be a program thats auto starting which is taking up all the memory slowing your laptop down e.g a virus (sounds as if its a keylogger which usualy take a lot of memory).

From my experiance you cant go wrong using the HiJackThis program. I usualy use it to scan the laptop and select all thats shown after the scan (selected with tick boxes) and then click fix. Bare in mind once fixed; all the programs that use to auto start will stop; so if you need them you have to start it again from the start button menu.

once you have done the HiJackThis Program and rebooted. try the Housecall again to make sure any virus are take care of.

[SimonG]

Ok, I ran Clamwin last night before I got your reply Chris. It took 12 hours (completed this morning) and it has three Trojans. One was in Documents and settings/all users/application data and two were in Google crash handler. Unfortunately, Clamwin doesn't give an option to delete them. That being said, at least I now know what I'm up against.

Thanks for your help Chris, it is greatly appreciated.

[ChrisWJ]

Excellent news Simon glad to have been of some help.