Associate
- Joined
- 6 Oct 2005
- Posts
- 135
Hi,
One of my work colleagues has given me his son's laptop to try and fix. I must admit I'm not really an expert on Windows so I could do with some help!
Problem:
Acer Travelmate 900, CD drive, no floppy. WinXP Pro.
It's snafu!
The system had a virus scan run on it, I understand it came back with hits, and when it was being cleaned it went 'haywire'. It now doesn't work very well... to say the least...
Symptoms:
- System starts and insists on running Scandisk. It reports 'corrections have been made' but I don't know what they are.
- Windows starts, but very slowly.
- Desktop shows no icons.
- Desktop has no Taskbar.
- Task Manager does work... only processes running and using cpu time *seem* to be McAfee AV
- Trying to start process 'explorer.exe' returns 'does not exist' error.
- Browsing for executables to start shows 'My Computer' icon as the default icon (ie. what you get when the real one has been wiped), and attempting to access 'C:\' gets a 'does not exist' error, but can right-click on it and get the 'Format' option! (Which may come in handy!).
- 'Iexplore.exe' can be started. But can't navigate to C:\ from there.
- Everything takes ages to happen, but cpu utilisation is at < 10% (though it's never at 0% either)
Attempted fixes:
- Thrown in the WinXP cd to attempt a 'repair install' - I couldn't see the option, though maybe I was looking in the wrong place
- Attempted to close down all the McAfee AV stuff (via Task Mgr) to stop the system thrashing (gently), but it all automatically restarts
- Errr... that's it!
The owner is happy for me to trash it and re-install WinXP from scratch, but if anyone has any clever ideas in the meantime - I'd love to try and bring it back to life!
One of my work colleagues has given me his son's laptop to try and fix. I must admit I'm not really an expert on Windows so I could do with some help!
Problem:
Acer Travelmate 900, CD drive, no floppy. WinXP Pro.
It's snafu!
The system had a virus scan run on it, I understand it came back with hits, and when it was being cleaned it went 'haywire'. It now doesn't work very well... to say the least...
Symptoms:
- System starts and insists on running Scandisk. It reports 'corrections have been made' but I don't know what they are.
- Windows starts, but very slowly.
- Desktop shows no icons.
- Desktop has no Taskbar.
- Task Manager does work... only processes running and using cpu time *seem* to be McAfee AV
- Trying to start process 'explorer.exe' returns 'does not exist' error.
- Browsing for executables to start shows 'My Computer' icon as the default icon (ie. what you get when the real one has been wiped), and attempting to access 'C:\' gets a 'does not exist' error, but can right-click on it and get the 'Format' option! (Which may come in handy!).
- 'Iexplore.exe' can be started. But can't navigate to C:\ from there.
- Everything takes ages to happen, but cpu utilisation is at < 10% (though it's never at 0% either)
Attempted fixes:
- Thrown in the WinXP cd to attempt a 'repair install' - I couldn't see the option, though maybe I was looking in the wrong place
- Attempted to close down all the McAfee AV stuff (via Task Mgr) to stop the system thrashing (gently), but it all automatically restarts
- Errr... that's it!
The owner is happy for me to trash it and re-install WinXP from scratch, but if anyone has any clever ideas in the meantime - I'd love to try and bring it back to life!
