Is it repairable?

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kilo_17

kilo_17

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Jan 27, 2011
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I'm trying to help a friend with his laptop, which was infected with more than one virus. The computer's gotten to the point where it won't load Windows anymore, I get hal.dll and boot.ini error messages. I've tried replacing them with no avail. I just need to get to Windows for a little bit to get some files off the computer (which I should have done in the first place, but I didn't think to do that as I was trying to rid the computer of the viruses). Is there anything I can do to get into Windows without wiping the drive? Thanks for any help you can offer
 
Solution
Saga Lout




Slave it into another Windows system and use Recuva from Piriform - the CCleaner people at http://www.piriform.com or Restoration2514 from http://www.win-freeware.com. Both seem to succeed where the other fails. It's hard to see how a single virus could create so much free space though.


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Download a Linux operating system, burn it to CD and run it live in RAM to give you access to the hard disk. Rescue the data and if you wish, install the new system over Windows to give the laptop a useful future life.

My own preference is PCLinuxOS from http://www.pclinuxos.com and for burning, ImgBurn but there are hundreds of Linux OS out there - most of them free of any charge.


 
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I'm running PCLOS via Live CD, how do I access the drive?
EDIT: I accessed the drive named "80gb media" and all I see are the following items: bootex.log, hal.dll, ntdetect.com, and ntldr. How do I find the other stuff on the drive?
 
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Slave it into another Windows system and use Recuva from Piriform - the CCleaner people at http://www.piriform.com or Restoration2514 from http://www.win-freeware.com. Both seem to succeed where the other fails. It's hard to see how a single virus could create so much free space though.


 
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Solution
Ah yes, Piriform makes pretty good stuff. But there's a problem, the drive (it's a Fujitsu, I can get the exact model if needed) has an IDE connector, but I've tried and tried and cannot connect an IDE cable to it (seems like the pins just don't line up quite right). I'll try again and see if I can get it connected.
 
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Well the local computer store came through for me (not the first time :lol:), but with the slave laptop drive connected I cannot get the computer to boot for some reason, the master hard drive won't even spin up!
 
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So the laptop disk spins up but still only shows those four files? What does Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management >Disk Management have to say about that disk? Is it definitely one 80Gb chunk or partitioned in some way?

It's also worth going to My Computer, right click the disk, and go to Properties then Hardware tab>Properties button Volumes tab Populate button might show something useful.

 
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Believe it or not I got it working, I didn't notice the advanced tab in Recuva, I selected everything that looked like it would help it to find the files better, and it found a ton of files! The setup I'm using for all this is pretty ridiculous, I have a Socket A board on a cardboard box all hooked up, running Windows 2k, but hey, it worked for what I needed it to. Thanks for all the help, I didn't even think to use a file recovery program until you mentioned it.
 
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