I am working on a windows XP pro SP 2 machine. Its a custom build.
It had a ton of malware on it and it booted to windows but was immediately assaulted with the usual windows from fake anti virus companies about how badly infected it was and had to scan right away. Task manager was locked out, control panel was locked out, display settings were locked out, You could not reboot the computer. Internet explorer would auto launch and connect to some websites to download additional tools to help fix the problem and all of it would just run with no user input required. The windows could not be closed by any means. The desktop wallpaper was even a virus warning. So I did what any good tech would do, I pulled the power cord.
I ran hitman pro on it from safe mode. It found a good dozen trojans and malwares. It also found 2 rootkits and a bootkit. It said these latter 3 items would be removed on a reboot. So I rebooted.
I get as far as the windows splash screen and it reboots.
Tried safe mode, same issue.
Tried safe mode command prompt only, same issue.
I booted it with the option to not reboot on errors and I got this message.
Stop 0x0000007b
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
It said I should check for viruses.
I took the drive out, USB slaved it to another comp and ran Superantispyware, malwarebytes, kaspersky, spybot S&D all of them found additional malware but none of them solved the issue.
I decided the virus probably damaged the boot sector and put in an XP cd and booted from it. The problem is I never get the option to run the recovery console. It goes straight to the next window which is to pick a partition to install windows too. This window shows that I have a partition, but there is no Windows OS installed at this time. So even a repair install is out since there needs to be a visible OS in order to do that.
While the drive is slaved on USB I can read all the files just fine. I can open documents, play MP3s, copy and move files. As a slave drive it works perfectly.
I had assumed I could resolve this with a simple fixboot from recovery console but since I can't run the recovery console I seem to be stuck.
I even went so far as create a boot CD using UBCD4win to boot from and use its repair tools to fix the partition but even that fails to start, and just reboots like the rest of them.
sorry this is so long I just wanted to get all the info I had into the message.
So what can I do to fix this without formatting and reinstalling?
Thanks
-Thomas Vuke
It had a ton of malware on it and it booted to windows but was immediately assaulted with the usual windows from fake anti virus companies about how badly infected it was and had to scan right away. Task manager was locked out, control panel was locked out, display settings were locked out, You could not reboot the computer. Internet explorer would auto launch and connect to some websites to download additional tools to help fix the problem and all of it would just run with no user input required. The windows could not be closed by any means. The desktop wallpaper was even a virus warning. So I did what any good tech would do, I pulled the power cord.
I ran hitman pro on it from safe mode. It found a good dozen trojans and malwares. It also found 2 rootkits and a bootkit. It said these latter 3 items would be removed on a reboot. So I rebooted.
I get as far as the windows splash screen and it reboots.
Tried safe mode, same issue.
Tried safe mode command prompt only, same issue.
I booted it with the option to not reboot on errors and I got this message.
Stop 0x0000007b
A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer.
It said I should check for viruses.
I took the drive out, USB slaved it to another comp and ran Superantispyware, malwarebytes, kaspersky, spybot S&D all of them found additional malware but none of them solved the issue.
I decided the virus probably damaged the boot sector and put in an XP cd and booted from it. The problem is I never get the option to run the recovery console. It goes straight to the next window which is to pick a partition to install windows too. This window shows that I have a partition, but there is no Windows OS installed at this time. So even a repair install is out since there needs to be a visible OS in order to do that.
While the drive is slaved on USB I can read all the files just fine. I can open documents, play MP3s, copy and move files. As a slave drive it works perfectly.
I had assumed I could resolve this with a simple fixboot from recovery console but since I can't run the recovery console I seem to be stuck.
I even went so far as create a boot CD using UBCD4win to boot from and use its repair tools to fix the partition but even that fails to start, and just reboots like the rest of them.
sorry this is so long I just wanted to get all the info I had into the message.
So what can I do to fix this without formatting and reinstalling?
Thanks
-Thomas Vuke