Help with Virus after downloading torrent

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Hi there i have a question. My friend downloaded something from the pirate bay and it was loaded with viruses. He cant get into safe mode or anything else except boot menu what can he do? He has windows xp. Thank you. The viruses I believe are some kind of trojans. Sounds like it is this PAV for Personal Anti-Virus spyware what should he do? Reformat or ?? He can't boot up at all...
 
I have some bad news for you. PAV (Personal Anti-VIrus) is one of the nastiest peices of malware on the Internet. I see that one quite often and it's a pain to remove.

It boils down to how badly he needs to save his installation. There are techniques he can try outside Windows to remove PAV or at least boot again and then use anti-malware utilities to cleanup the installation. BUt it's a long shot and he could waste a lot of time. A reformat/re-install is guaranteed to work but he will lose all his personal files plus he must re-install all programs and device drivers.

Report back which way he wants to go.

-- Andy
 
The actual reformat & re-install of Windows is almost straightforward. You boot from the Windows Xp installation CD for your type of Windows XP. Just follow the screens and the choices are pretty obvious if you are typical computer user. When you get to the screen displaying the partions, you first delete the current Windows partition, then create a new partion and select NTFS format. Then the installation will start.

You will be prompted for a product key. There should be Windows Product Key sticker on the side of the PC if Windows came with it. If the Windows is a retail copy, the sticker came with the booklet.

Repost if you have questions. Also, ask your friend if he has any valuable files still on the hard drive. Once you reformat, they will be gone. So if he wants to keep them, we need to back them up (difficult but can be done.)

-- Andy
 
He's got a problem now. They no longer sell retail copies of Windows XP. You cannot install Windows XP without a Product Key.

The independent store I'm affiliated with here at Ottawa, Canada stocked up on copies and have about 5 left. He might be able to find one at an independent store near him.

Ask him if his PC came with "recovery CDs" or "Restore CDs" These are different and meant to recover/restore your computer to it's factory installation in a situation like this.

There may also be a factory image on his PC. When the comptuer starts up, is there an option for "recovery partition" or "system partition"?

Repost with answers please.

-- Andy
 
Windows 7 retail version isn't available until October 22. He could get Vista but that's almost 4 times the size of Windows XP and his computer will run like a slug.

Where did he get his Windows XP originally?

-- Andy
 
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