On Fri, Feb 24, 2012 at 9:47 AM,
<joe@actionline.com> wrote:
>> ... I need to find a fast and efficient way to get my nephew's
>> win-xp box restored to a working state ...
Lisa replied:
> This sounds like a virus. You might have tried to boot
> into Spybot Search and Destroy initially.
I did find an old widows XP install disk so I tried that (several times),
but ran painfully slow and locked up several times, so I suspected either
a memory or HD problem. Then I tried installing Linux and that installed
fine and worked for a while, but it also locked up at various stages.
If you just reinstalled, you might not have overwritten the virus (which is usually read only which is why you need to boot into a repair disk like SpyBot).
Try that first!
Download and burn to a disk and boot into it.
So, I suspect either a memory or HD problem. So ...
1. How can I check the memory and HD integrity on his old box? (or what
else should I check?
Use diagnostics programs: [Did you try the HP diagnostics?]
2. How can I reformat the entire HD to try reinstalling again?
If this is a virus issue, that would fix it. Be careful not to lose the HP restore and Diagnostics partition if you care, otherwise dump it (like many people do) and install dual boot Linux/XP.
I also tried my widows XP install disk on one of my old computers that I
retrieved from the attic on which I had installed Linux. The XP install
disk worked fine on that, but after it installed, I saw the "activation"
requirement shown in the screen capture at this link:
http://www.upquick.com/temp/activateXP.jpg
That's nothing, just choose one option and follow the process and get the XP number off the box label to use.
You can look at the licensing for it online. I believe you get to install two copies.
What's up with that? More M$ BS I assume.