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[AMDinside]

This computer has me on my final nerves.

I have been working on this thing for about a week.  I was told that the computer was very slow.  I try to boot it to find it doesn't boot.  It was missing critical dll's for winlogon.  I pulled the hard drive and put it in another PC. 

I find that this thing is riddled with viruses.  After running the virus scan overnight I come back to find 30k+ viruses.  All the same virus, just thousands of instances all over the drive. 

After cleaning the viruses I copied the needed dll just to find that another dll was needed.  I ended up copying the whole System32 folder over.  Big mistake.  Now I don't even get into windows.  It freezes before the windows loading screen and won't boot into safe mode either.

Now I am trying to run the Windows CD to do a repair and guess what?  The computer refuses to boot to any for 4, yes 4, different Windows XP CD's.  It also refused to boot to a Windows XP bootable floppy.  It did boot with a Windows 98 floppy and my 7.10 Ubuntu CD.  I have tried a different CD-ROM to no luck.

Please help me out before I throw this PC out the freakin' window.

[Detonator]

first off before more advice is given, is this a customer's pc or your own? is the information THAT valuable?

[AMDinside]

It is the PC of one of my coworkers' son.

[Flippy10x]

Alright, So tell him that he shouldn't have downloaded so much porn. Format the drive and go from there.

[AMDinside]

I would format it, if I could boot from the Windows CD.  I could pull the drive and format it, but then I am still stuck with a useless computer since the windows CD refuses to boot.

[Detonator]

use DBAN
http://dban.sourceforge.net/

[Flippy10x]

I would format it, if I could boot from the Windows CD.  I could pull the drive and format it, but then I am still stuck with a useless computer since the windows CD refuses to boot.

I know it's a long shot, but I have come into contact with viruses that'll interfere with BIOS operations before.  Actually, good question -- What are the specs on this computer?

[AMDinside]

I would format it, if I could boot from the Windows CD.  I could pull the drive and format it, but then I am still stuck with a useless computer since the windows CD refuses to boot.

I know it's a long shot, but I have come into contact with viruses that'll interfere with BIOS operations before.  Actually, good question -- What are the specs on this computer?

1Ghz Pentium 3, 20GB hdd, 384MB RAM

[PsiFire]

Reflash BIOS, pull drive and see if the CD will boot with the system naked. If it does, stick the drive in and see if it will boot. If it does, Bob's your uncle (does Elite know?). If not, toss the thing out the window and tell him to get a new machine - specs are a bit old anyways.

[Flippy10x]

Is it an OEM? Some OEM computers are really bitchy about booting XP CDs, sometimes they require a little help. Psi's got it right though, see if it'll boot from the CD without the drive at all. The registry from the install on the drive is toast anyway, so I seriously doubt you'll get it to boot even with a repair install. Stick a fork in it.

[Popsikle]

Reflash BIOS, pull drive and see if the CD will boot with the system naked. If it does, stick the drive in and see if it will boot. If it does, Bob's your uncle (does Elite know?). If not, toss the thing out the window and tell him to get a new machine - specs are a bit old anyways.

This, reflash or update the bios.  If that doesnt work, try PXE booting.

[PsiFire]

You know, PXE booting is one thing I've never played with. I should screw around with that one day for shits and giggles just to gain some experience with it.

Even if data exists on the drive that can be recovered, I'd be EXREMELY hesitant to hooking it up lest you reinfect the system. Tho the virus scanner was able to detect the major one, there COULD be some that are undetectable/exotic. But if the data is that important, try getting the system to boot from CD and resintall to a new drive, then attach the old drive via a USB enclosure (geezus, does that thing even HAVE USB? ) and copy the data over selectively.

If it DOES have USB, is the BIOS new enough to boot from a USB key? Might try a tiny linux install.

[AMDinside]

PXE booting?  I am unfamiliar with that.

Yes it does have USB, and BIOS updates are through a floppy disk.

I'll talk to the owner of the PC and see what they want to do. 
I know I pulled the HDD and Floppy to try and boot it to the CD, but it just came up with a message saying there is no boot device.

Thanks for all the help so far guys.

[GenTsoChiken]

PXE = Network Booting, if i recall correctly

very useful when you have a lot of computers to ghost or what ever the case may be.

[AMDinside]

BIOS has been updated, no change.