IMedia M201 recovery partition

[leehinkleman]

My friend's computer acquired the "privacy Center" virus.
Pressing F8 key to start in 'safe mode with networking' resulted in larger display of the
Privacy Center, but no user functions, and 2nd attempt of plain 'safe mode' resulted in the
error that Windows couldn't start because the file
/WINDOWS/SYSTEM32/CONFIG/SYSTEM
missing or corrupted.
Pressing the F11 key has no effect to access the recovery process, and a floppy diskette and
CD made by Packard Bell's downloaded bootdisk16.exe program didn't help.
I tried to execute 'F11.BAT' from the a:/> prompt with the floppy diskette, and the CD instructed me
to insert Master CDs, which I didn't have, and the GUI display made by the CD wasn't working
anyway, so I pressed Esc, and was able to type
C: at the DOS prompt and dir /p to browse directories and view files.
I saw directories of 'SETUP' and 'RESTORE' but didn't recognize any useful files.
I saw 'WINHPH.TAG' and 'TATTOO.BIN' in the upper directory,and 'TATTOO.EXE' in a directory,
and I saw a directory of CAB, which I didn't browse.
The floppy diskette made(above) said 'Starting Windows 98...'
But this iMedia was running XP Home until the incident 72 hours ago.
Using FDISK on a Windows 95 startup diskette displayed that Drive 1 had 2 gigabytes of non-Dos,
and 38 gigabytes of NTFS partition, and Drive 2 has 60 gigabytes of NTFS.
I also used Injector Linux on a diskette, which could read the 'non-DOS' 2 gigabyte partition,
but couldn't read either of the NTFS partitions.
Can a file in the hidden partition, which I've apparently been browsing, start the recovery
or re-installation process?
Thanks for your advice.

 

[leehinkleman]

I forgot to say that I did try
TATTOO.EXE
from within that file's directory, and that resulted in a prompt for a password, which I didn't know.

 

[Guest]

i have the same problem, however it says insert master cd1 when i put the pc on. i have packard bell i media computer too. i tried calling packard bell for a recovery cd (which costs roughly 50GBP) but their lines are always busy. is there anything i can do?? email me on aboukarahmed@hotmail.co.uk thankss

 

[robjohnston]

Packard Bell units have the same recovery procedure as Acer computers if they are sold on the UK market, because Acer make Packard Bell for the UK [& emachines which are awful].

Power on and immediately hold down the ALT key, and tap the F10 key. This should load into the recovery console. From there, running a full recovery is self explanatory. If you are doing this to recover the PC from a virus I would recommend running the full destructive recovery which is usually the top option out of the two.