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Shoud I give up and format?

By irctrix ·
I was helping a friend with his computer today and ran into a few problems. He has a Windows ME box with 128 meg ram and a 768 processor. With a memory watching program tracking what memory is in use no matter what gets closed out there is never any free ram. His Internet Explorer will not stay open long enough to search for anything help wise and also he has NAV 2001 which is expired. We went to put Norton System works 2004 on his machine but would not allow us to uninstall 2001, kept saying it needed the file navustub.exe which is not on his drive. I did a search to see what the file was and got mixed results one saying was a trojan file and one saying it was never a file with norton. Anyways i would like some tips on what i should do for him so i can get him operational again as it seems he already has a virus or 2 on his machine.

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by Oz_Media In reply to Shoud I give up and forma ...

Well first of all, you've noted he has a virus or two. If you have run a full scan and detected viruses, have you tried to remove them?
What are they?
Have you run Adaware or Spybot for spyware too?
Sounds like a trojan, but you would have to clean everything else out first.

It usually helps to run system file checker AFTER removing malware etc.

If he doesn't have a lot he REALLY needs, which should either be backed up or not stored on the computer anyway, then it may be easier and better in the long run to reformat. I've had loads of home users PC's where it just makes moe sense to format than try to fix.

You end up with a different build every time and they install a whole bunch of NEW free stuff to play with.

If you do reformat, it's always nice to install and configure AVG antivirus (Far fewer probs than Norton, it's FAr more resourceful! and it's FREE! http://www.grisoft.com ). Then install and update Adaware: http://www.lavasoft.com
then go to Mozilla and install Firefox instead of IE as a default browserand Thunderbird for the email client.

This will REALLY give him the leading hand on picking up the BS from Web surfing, email etc. in the future.

May complain about the reformat but they are ALWAYS elated afterwards! SPEED, SPEED, SPEED YAY!!

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by irctrix In reply to

Ok i have done everything i can for him on his machine. A fresh format and install for him is only option i got left.

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by irctrix In reply to Shoud I give up and forma ...

Yes i did all the scans i could with what he has on his system. Adaware was bad i removed over 90 elements from his machine. I also removed 6 trojans and 2 worms.

I can not find the rest as IE wont stay open long enough for me to use trend micro and the 2001 uninstall problems wont allow me to install his 2004 he purchased. So either i am deadlocked and truely need to format or there is another way around that i can not think of. Other ideas will be helpfull before i just go and format his machine.

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by Blackcurrant In reply to Shoud I give up and forma ...
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by willcomp In reply to Shoud I give up and forma ...

Download AdAware SE and Spybot and definition updates on another PC. See links below:

http://www.lavasoftusa.com/default.shtml.en

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

Download Stinger from:

http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/

Burn to a CD and install on problem PC.

Definition update for Spybot is self installing. Update for Ad-Aware must be unzipped and copied to program folder.

Dalton

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by irctrix In reply to

Wont work in the instance at all sorry it is beyond spybot and adaware.

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by irctrix In reply to Shoud I give up and forma ...

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