Recovering a HDD

DoubleCheese · 4 Jul 2006 at 13:51

I've got a laptop that has been infected with something, I think. It was fine until the machine was exposed to the WWW via a USB modem given with a new free ADSL connection from TalkTalk...PC only has SP1 by the way!

The machine became very unresponsive and slow at doing anything, could not run AVG antivirus, Adaware, Defrag....nothing Now the machine will not boot to Windows, it gets to the Win XP Home splash screen then after 2 min BSOD's and restarts, process repeats.

So, is it possible to remove the HDD and rescue some files off it by connecting it to a working PC? Any other ideas other than formatting and re-installing?

stuartbat · 4 Jul 2006 at 13:54

yes u could do that but u will need an ide adaptor to do i belive, as they are differnet sizes for the laptop and desktop hdds

ByteJuggler · 4 Jul 2006 at 17:02

DoubleCheese said:
I've got a laptop that has been infected with something, I think. It was fine until the machine was exposed to the WWW via a USB modem given with a new free ADSL connection from TalkTalk...PC only has SP1 by the way!

The machine became very unresponsive and slow at doing anything, could not run AVG antivirus, Adaware, Defrag....nothing Now the machine will not boot to Windows, it gets to the Win XP Home splash screen then after 2 min BSOD's and restarts, process repeats.

So, is it possible to remove the HDD and rescue some files off it by connecting it to a working PC? Any other ideas other than formatting and re-installing?

Download a Linux LiveCD/RescueCD with ClamAV anti virus, or make yourself a BartPE Windows LiveCD rescue cd with anti virus software on, then boot from the CD and clean the machine from there. Alternatively or in addition, you can then also copy the files straight over to another machine either via a network (providing you've got a network and the network card was recognized by the boot CD's) or an attached external disk (again providing it was recognized.) Links:

Some suggestions:

Ubuntu Desktop 6.06 livecd:
http://ftp.ticklers.org/releases.ubuntu.org/releases/6.06/

PLD Rescue CD:
http://rescuecd.pld-linux.org/

System Rescue CD:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

BartPE Bootable Windows CD LiveCD:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Ultimate Boot CD (Mostly DOS tools apparently)
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

DoubleCheese · 5 Jul 2006 at 21:29

Thanks for that ByteJuggler, I never thought of that!

Behemoth · 5 Jul 2006 at 21:45

ByteJuggler said:
Download a Linux LiveCD/RescueCD with ClamAV anti virus, or make yourself a BartPE Windows LiveCD rescue cd with anti virus software on, then boot from the CD and clean the machine from there. Alternatively or in addition, you can then also copy the files straight over to another machine either via a network (providing you've got a network and the network card was recognized by the boot CD's) or an attached external disk (again providing it was recognized.) Links:

Some suggestions:

Ubuntu Desktop 6.06 livecd:
http://ftp.ticklers.org/releases.ubuntu.org/releases/6.06/

PLD Rescue CD:
http://rescuecd.pld-linux.org/

System Rescue CD:
http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page

BartPE Bootable Windows CD LiveCD:
http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

Ultimate Boot CD (Mostly DOS tools apparently)
http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Ultimate Boot CD for Windows
http://www.ubcd4win.com/

That BartPE Bootable Windows CD Live is excellent, Ive got a friends LAptop here with very much the same problem that you've got, I used that and was able to sort in no time at all, got all her files off safely ran the AV program and went from there.

She had actually condemend the thing to death, so she'll be pleased when I hand it back over to her tomorrow fully working again