My Dad Killed the Family Computer.
BrettSD
San Diego, CA New
Hey guys, I've used the icrontic.com team with help on malware/virus problems before and I direct a lot of people to your forums for help on their own issues. Well, I'm back.
As the title suggests my father killed my parents' desktop by installing and running one of those "free utility scan" jobs. It seems like whatever he installed and ran has all but killed the computer.
I can't post a HijackThis log because attempting to boot it up in any mode, including all Safe Modes gives the following message.
STOP: c0000218 Unknown Hard Error
Unknown Hard Error
Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.
As you can imagine I'm the system administrator/technical support group.
That message is preceded by quite a long list of files being brought up. It's been a long time since I've needed to run anything in Safe Mode so I can't remember for the life of me if that's normal.
After further interrogation this seems to be what my dad downloaded.
http://www.pcregistrycleaner.com/
I have no idea why he went looking for this. Like the site says it's on TV. They already have a paid for Norton suite installed on it. I guess it's the whole "the computer's slow so there must be something wrong with it" mentalities... Never mind that it's going on 9 years.
Suggestions? Ideas? I've been telling them that they're long overdue for a new one, but I guess they needed this machine to last for another 6 months or so. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is trying to boot from the XP CD and starting over.
Thank you for your help in advance.
As the title suggests my father killed my parents' desktop by installing and running one of those "free utility scan" jobs. It seems like whatever he installed and ran has all but killed the computer.
I can't post a HijackThis log because attempting to boot it up in any mode, including all Safe Modes gives the following message.
STOP: c0000218 Unknown Hard Error
Unknown Hard Error
Beginning dump of physical memory
Physical memory dump complete.
Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.
As you can imagine I'm the system administrator/technical support group.
That message is preceded by quite a long list of files being brought up. It's been a long time since I've needed to run anything in Safe Mode so I can't remember for the life of me if that's normal.
After further interrogation this seems to be what my dad downloaded.
http://www.pcregistrycleaner.com/
I have no idea why he went looking for this. Like the site says it's on TV. They already have a paid for Norton suite installed on it. I guess it's the whole "the computer's slow so there must be something wrong with it" mentalities... Never mind that it's going on 9 years.
Suggestions? Ideas? I've been telling them that they're long overdue for a new one, but I guess they needed this machine to last for another 6 months or so. The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is trying to boot from the XP CD and starting over.
Thank you for your help in advance.
0
Comments
If you're unable to boot up even in Safe mode I'm afraid I can't help much.
I would suggest you post here for the techs to give you some suggestions:
http://icrontic.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=32