Long story short: My little brother managed to get my old pc infected with some sort of malware. I cannot copy//paste files, use the taskbar, activate System Restore, connect to the internet, or install/uninstall anything.

I can get my Windows key, or get a pirated OS that doesn't require a key. What I need some help with is backing up my old drivers. I did a bit of research and found a bunch of different solutions, anyone here have any advice or links for how to backup all my relevant drivers for my current Windows XP installation? Also -take note that I currently can't copy//paste or cut//paste any files, so if anyone has any ideas as how to remedy that as well let me know.

If anyone has a link to any Windows XP OS torrent that they know to be successful, let me know.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 30 2010, 6:03 pm by CecilSunkure.

You can always rent out a server online and upload your files.

Nope, I cannot

Does this help?

Okay that will work. I can boot from Linux to backup my files, yay. Although, I'm unsure of what to backup. I have limited amounts of time to have access to computers for the moment, so if anyone could give me a link or information on exactly what (and how) to backup driver wise I would appreciate it.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 30 2010, 6:19 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Drive --> Driver

My bad. I missed that tiny, yet very important, part.

Did you try booting into windows safe mode? Reboot the system and after POST but before windows keep pressing the f8 key (might be f10 or f2 or something but I think its f8). Sometimes viruses can't operate in safe mode.

Also, look for something called "Device Manger"

If you open it up, it should list all the hardware on your pc, then you can right click and go to properties for each item, click on "Drivers" then "Driver files" and it gives you the location of the driver file(s) for that devcie.

F5 or F8, then that same button again, gives you more options:

Safe mode
Safe mode with networking #If you want internet.
Blah
Blah
Blah
Blah

Blah
Blah
Blah

The top two I find the most important.

Yeah safe mode didn't make much of a difference at all last time this happened, but I'll try again- I might gain internet connection or at least be able to backup my files.

Thanks for the info guys. Hopefully I can get to work on this all tonight.

Give Rkill a shot, if you can get it on the computer and run it.

I'll give it a shot first, thanks Moose.

I'm actually working around getting rid (as best I can) of a virus that doesn't seem to be particularly nasty. Avira Antivir is doing an excellent job so far, so much so that it detects the virus (exe) if you just highlight it. I'd recommend it in the future.

You might try downloading Avira's recovery system boot disc, which will let you scan anything attached devices it can recognize. I ran into trouble with my RAID, though, and it only scanned my single drive. If you run this, I'm fairly certain you'll at least cripple the virus enough to the point where you can use your regular OS enough to back up data in a familiar setting.

So hopefully you can boot just fine into linux and are in the process of backing up your files. As for backing up your drivers, I find it strange that you would WANT to do this? Nearly all the drivers you could possibly want are online somewhere. If you download your ethernet/wireless drivers and copy them over to the fresh install of whatever OS, you should be able to then download all the other drivers you need (really all I can think of is video, sound, acpi).

Since this isn't exactly public, and I know it's only going to one person, I can PM you an XP ISO that I have downloaded from MSDN sans key (you already have one, right?) via mediafire. I also have a slightly public key for XP (IDK if it's been used yet; I found it on 4chan).

I recommend backing up your "My Documents" folder, anything you have downloaded via torrent and such and are certain you want to keep, any old games which you know are going to be hard to find again which don't require an ISO to install (SC in particular no longer needs an install, or at least not when I had SC installed on D: and reinstalled windows on C:). Other than that, it's a good time for a fresh start. There's often many programs which you don't have a good reason to keep, but you can't seem to get rid of them.

I'm currently in the process of cleaning up in preparation for an OS upgrade (7 or mint, probably), and there's a surprisingly small amount of data I really want to keep. I store all my game CDs on ISO file, all my videos/pictures/documents will need to be backed up, but I can redownload windows virtual control panel to mount cds, redownload all of my motherboard/video drivers, redownload the programs I use the most often, and add codecs as I need them to play videos. I'd recommend you to save all your cdkeys in a txt file somewhere so you don't lose them.

Oh, well then I suppose I don't need to back the drivers up, I'll just download and find them.

As for the XP ISO, I would love to use it as long is it's Windows XP Home Edition so I can use my own key. MSDN sans key? What's that?

sans

MSDN is the Microsoft Developer's Network (or something). I had access to it while I was at college (most colleges do) so I downloaded a whole bunch of XP Pros (and server '07, vista business). It's a raw ISO image. Sorry, I only have XP pro discs (which are guaranteed by me to be botnet free). The key I found was also for XP home (sorry), and my XP Pro keys are being used currently. you might try to install XP Pro with your home key, but I doubt it will work. Apparently "XP isn't vista, and the cds have to be specific to the key".

I recommend you find a torrent or some such which links to one of the versions found on this page. Look under operating systems for the hash, and see if the hash matches.

Reinstalled Windows, and updated my drivers. I believe everything was resolved!

BTW Moose Rkill killed the explorer process, which wasn't very helpful >.<

Yup, I'm currently reinstalling a ton of shit.. This should take a while.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 31 2010, 8:33 am by CecilSunkure.

The sticky in this forum has useful programs you might like.

Seriously, though. If you don't need it, don't install it. Have you read the tweak guides tweaking companion? I highly recommend it.

Windows update takes the longest to do when reinstalling windows. Sometimes it's easiest to leave it on automatic, and let it sit over night.

Yeah I've gone through the entirety of those stickies, and found a lot of cool things. I especially like 7zip.

Yeah, I'm just installing necessities and things I want; SC, Adobe Flash CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS4, CCleaner, uTorrent, Python, etc. etc.

Oh my god, the Windows updates were ridiculous....... I should have just left my pc on overnight to grab them all, like you said.

Oh, and for some reason I got a faulty sound driver. I'm having a ton of trouble finding out which I need, so I'm probably going to resort to asking for help on the majorgeek forums.

What motherboard/sound card do you have? Post from cpuz/anything relevant like dxdiag/system/devmgmt.msc.

Motherboard: MSI Gamila/Giovani/Neon Series

Audio Adapter: Intel 82801DB ICH4 - AC'97 Audio Controller [B-0]

I currently have, in the device manager under the sound section, Audio Codecs; Legacy Audio Drivers; Legacy Video Capture Devices; Media Control Devices; Video Codecs.

I have a pre-built HP Pavilion a705w desktop.

Under dxdiag in the sound tab, it said no sound card was found.

Not sure what to look for/do in the system folder.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 31 2010, 9:03 pm by CecilSunkure. Reason: Added desktop.

Well AFAIK, AC '97 is realtek stuff.

Just posting the motherboard without any numbers isn't much help. While I can decipher a lot about the motherboard from the chipset, it's quite difficult to really be certain of all the drivers.

as you can see, I can tell almost everything about my motherboard from this picture, since I know the north/south bridge, the manufacturer, and the model number.

It looks like you have this motherboard. You can download the HP drivers here but it's generally better to download from the actual manufacturer rather than the OEM. So I'd get the realtek audio driver from realtek, and the chipset driver from intel.

Also, you don't have to install all the drivers listed on the HP page. You obviously don't need the modem drivers, so don't bother with them.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Mar 31 2010, 9:24 pm by rockz.