spyware bloated machine giving trouble

[KKHAMMER]

Cannot get into safe mode

Ok, heres the problem and what ived done already...

I have this customers computer and it was really bad... I removed an obserd amount of spyware and a few virus's "Bloodhound somthing" was one of them... Anyway, i ran Microsoft anti spyware, adaware, Norton, and housecall.trendmicro.com, i went through MSconfig and did some things in registry editor, i ran chkdsk /r, .... the problem is 90% fixed from when i got it but i still cannot go into Safemode , i press F8 on startup and and a blue screen pops up for a split second then it is gone, i have seen the error screen before but do not recall what it says then after it pops up like that, the computer restarts then i can choose to go into safe mode again which it will do the same thing or i can start windows normally. Any Ideas?

 

[Galaxy High]

Have you tried booting from the CD and pressing 'R' to recover windows? (assuming you have XP)
I think you can also reinstall windows from the CD without erasing any 'personal' data if that fails.

Good Luck

 

[ender]

Hmm.. did the computer have Norton installed when it came in? Bloodhound Heuristics is part of their scanning engine (or at least it was a few years ago when I was using Norton ). If you used another AV to scan the computer while Norton was installed (or before it was PROPERLY uninstalled) then it would have detected Bloodhound Heuristics as a virus (I know that from bitter experience ). If you actually removed it in using another AV it's quite likely that this is the cause of your problems (or at least part of it).

I'd recommend removing Norton altogether and installing a different AV. AVG Free does the trick for free and if you don't mind spending something you can get NOD32 which is the best solution money can buy (in my opinion anyway ). BTW, in order to remove Norton properly you'll most likely have to delete some (read most) of the files by hand and all of it's registry entries. Otherwise you'll just get youself in a big mess.

P.S. I don't quite understand how you were able to scan the computer if it doesn't boot in safe mode? Does it boot in normal mode? If you can't get the computer to boot anymore Galaxy High has the only possible solution. If that doesn't work you'll probably have to format and reinstall.