Drivers Are All Corrupt!

[Spacecadet]

Ok folks this is going to take a while here we go. I'm an idiot and downloaded a virus onto my system. It wiped out all my LAN drivers, my sound card drivers, and my USB port drivers. I can't even tell what hardware I’m running in order to find new ones and the Acer site sucks! It doesn’t even have any Vista 64bit drivers on it for my system!!!

I have an Acer Aspire M5201-E5621A Desktop
Running Windows Vista 64bit

I scanned the computer with AVG and killed he viruses. Tried removing all the hardware and reinstalling it but Windows tells me the best driver is installed but the best driver doesn’t work. Now AVG is acting all wonky as well. Yes I said wonky! I tried downloading every known driver for this computer and installed all of them hoping one would kick in so I at least would have internet again, NOTHING! It tells me over and over that the installation of new hardware failed. I even went out a bought a PCI USB card and it will not install either. I have looked for days and don't know how to find USB drivers for my computer. If I could find those then at least I could use my mouse and keyboard again. At the moment I’m using an old keyboard plugged into the port on the back. It cant be hardware related because the new USB card I bought wont work either!

Can someone please help me! How do I find drivers for all my hardware!

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Have you reset your cmos battery?
usb drivers should be in with your 'normal' mobo drivers package I'd have thought,
Moto

 

[Spacecadet]

how do i do that??

 

[tentaxlbunga]

The fastest med-kit are, reformat your drive (it totally delete your windows including your personal data), than install the windows with all the drivers. that should be enough.

 

[gamerk316]

Based on what you described, either you still have remnents of the virus, or you totally borked your Vista install, and should probably simply reformat the HD.

 

[ahthurungnone]

Do you have valuable information on your hard drive (pictures, music, etc.)?

If so, we will need to buy a new HD and do a fresh install with Windows on the new drive. Then you can access the old drive and move the pics, music, etc to your new drive. Then, format the old drive.

 

[Spacecadet]

Geeze I don't think I like those options, lol. there has got to be a way to fix this without losing everything! that will be a nightmare to even try and back it up. The PC i received didn't come with a windows cd, it came preinstalled. Would it be stored on the pc on a seperate drive like a laptop? Also, is there any way to reinstall over top of Vista and keep al the programs and settings like you used to do in XP?

 

[rand_79]

The problem with reinstalling overtop is you install over top of any virus remnants too.. Problems may keep reoccuring.

Call Acer and see if they will send you system restore dvd.. they usually will for a "shipping fee" of around 20$

 

[Spacecadet]

AVG was installed before the virus attack. I ran AVG and it said it couldent clean the virus so I deleted the files that were infected. Strangley enough it didn't find any virus's outside of the file that they came with. It wasnt found in my drivers. I'll try that program you recommended thanks. I have had people reccomend about 5 diffrent ones now and i'm going to install and run all of them lol.

 

[Spacecadet]

Just noticed a problem, combofix runs only on 32bit, my system is 64bit. Any suggestions?

 

[Spacecadet]

Update for you. I ran 2 out of the 5 programs that were recommended to me by you and a few others. It cleaned hundreds ofspy and malware files, was it supposed to find viruses too? If there were viruses the are gone! the problem I have now is I don't know what hardware I have and what drivers are corrupt. How do I find out what hardware I have?? All it tells me is i have an ethernet card it cant install or find software for.

 

[Spacecadet]

Update for you. I ran 2 out of the 5 programs that were recommended to me by you and a few others. It cleaned hundreds ofspy and malware files, was it supposed to find viruses too? If there were viruses the are gone! the problem I have now is I don't know what hardware I have and what drivers are corrupt. How do I find out what hardware I have?? All it tells me is i have an ethernet card it cant install or find software for.

 

[Spacecadet]

Well I have no ethernet connection either, thats a problem. Is there no app that will tell me the specs on my specific computer? Or can I not look it up with Acer for my specific pc? The problem i have is there are multiple hardware configs for my model of pc.

 

[Motopsychojdn]

Try downloading hardware monitor (or Cpu-z at a push) to a zipstick, then installing it on the pc, should give you lots of info on the mobo,ram etc
Moto

 

[Spacecadet]

Best answer selected by Spacecadet.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey