Hello everyone,
I was helping my aunt remotely via phone and TeamViewer, because her internet provider called her that spams are being sent out from her PC.
She has a Toshiba laptop with Windows XP Home Edition SP2. No anti-virus was installed and Windows Firewall was disabled. But her system seemed to work okay, during a brief check, I didn't find any suspicious processes running. I thought that maybe her Wireless network was hacked and that's how the spam was being sent out (her password was very weak).
I wanted to install an anti-virus, but it turned out, that most of them need XP SP3. I started installing SP3 and after a long time, I got the error message that ntldr cannot be copied. The file was there in the install directory of SP3, but I couldn't do anything to copy it, so I just skipped it. The installation continued, but later another error message appeared, that rdpwd.sys is being used and I should close all other programs. We terminated TeamViewer, my aunt killed some running processes (incl. an RDP-related one), but we couldn't continue installation. Unfortunately, after that, we killed another process, which triggered a Windows restart within 1 minute. We quickly canceled the SP3 installation. The computer rebooted and we were show the "Windows did not shut down properly, what do you want to do" boot menu. No matter what option we chose (normal, last working config, safe mode, etc.), the Windows logo would show up and the laptop would restart. I guess the SP3 installation didn't have enough time to roll back the changes before the restart.
I thought an XP repair installation would help. My aunt found only an XP Professional CD (she has Home on the laptop), which did not offer the repair installation option. We tried the repair using recovery console, incl. copying ntldr and ntdetect.com, etc. But nothing helped.
We did all this via the phone (my aunt has even difficulties with using her web-based email account), so you can image how complicated the situation became.
My question is: what is the best solution to fix her PC in your opinion? I think it would be a Windows repair installation (she has some files on the HDD that she doesn't want to lose), but if I remember correctly, she has an OEM XP Home SP2 installation and I'm not sure what kind of XP install disc would allow her to do a repair. There is no recovery partition on the laptop. I would mail her the required CD (I'm almost 10000km away).
Do you have any other ideas?
Thank you very much for your time and for the help!
I was helping my aunt remotely via phone and TeamViewer, because her internet provider called her that spams are being sent out from her PC.
She has a Toshiba laptop with Windows XP Home Edition SP2. No anti-virus was installed and Windows Firewall was disabled. But her system seemed to work okay, during a brief check, I didn't find any suspicious processes running. I thought that maybe her Wireless network was hacked and that's how the spam was being sent out (her password was very weak).
I wanted to install an anti-virus, but it turned out, that most of them need XP SP3. I started installing SP3 and after a long time, I got the error message that ntldr cannot be copied. The file was there in the install directory of SP3, but I couldn't do anything to copy it, so I just skipped it. The installation continued, but later another error message appeared, that rdpwd.sys is being used and I should close all other programs. We terminated TeamViewer, my aunt killed some running processes (incl. an RDP-related one), but we couldn't continue installation. Unfortunately, after that, we killed another process, which triggered a Windows restart within 1 minute. We quickly canceled the SP3 installation. The computer rebooted and we were show the "Windows did not shut down properly, what do you want to do" boot menu. No matter what option we chose (normal, last working config, safe mode, etc.), the Windows logo would show up and the laptop would restart. I guess the SP3 installation didn't have enough time to roll back the changes before the restart.
I thought an XP repair installation would help. My aunt found only an XP Professional CD (she has Home on the laptop), which did not offer the repair installation option. We tried the repair using recovery console, incl. copying ntldr and ntdetect.com, etc. But nothing helped.
We did all this via the phone (my aunt has even difficulties with using her web-based email account), so you can image how complicated the situation became.
My question is: what is the best solution to fix her PC in your opinion? I think it would be a Windows repair installation (she has some files on the HDD that she doesn't want to lose), but if I remember correctly, she has an OEM XP Home SP2 installation and I'm not sure what kind of XP install disc would allow her to do a repair. There is no recovery partition on the laptop. I would mail her the required CD (I'm almost 10000km away).
Do you have any other ideas?
Thank you very much for your time and for the help!
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