[Glitcher]

My Compaq laptop was hit by a virus recently, which damaged my internet connectivity. The virus is gone now, but it left all my network adapters corrupted. The image below explains it all:



Everything with a yellow exclamation mark needs to have the driver reinstalled, but that's a lot harder than it sounds. What I intended was to download the drivers from another computer and install them on the Compaq. Unfortunately, every website I visit links the required drivers to Microsoft.com, and that site only installs the drivers on the current computer! I can't do this on the Compaq because it has no connectivity. Personally, I think this is phenomenally stupid on Microsoft's part. It's like telling a guy in a wheelchair, "If you want to walk again, climb to rehabilitation center on the top floor."

So, plan B. I thought maybe I could reinstall the drivers from my Windows XP installation CD. Uninstalling the drivers in the first place was difficult enough, because I kept getting a error message saying, "Failed to uninstall device. This may be required to boot up the computer." It was only after I deleted the drivers' registry entries that I could uninstall them. Anyway, the Device Manager detected the Broadcom and Realtek drivers on the Windows XP CD and installed them, but they're still listed as corrupted! Now my Device Manager looks like this:



The great irony is that I did manage to find third-party downloads for these drivers. But after I install them, nothing changes in the Device Manager. Yellow exclamation marks are still abound and I have no connectivity. So how do I reinstall my corrupted drivers?

[etaf]

You will need to copy these from a working internet enabled PC and use something like a USB flash thumbdrive to copy or if a CD writer - use a CD-RW

goto the HP.com website (HP & Compaq merged in 2002)
support and drivers
put your exact model into the search box
and the windows version
and you will get a list of all the drivers
download those
copy onto the non-working PC
and install

Are you sure you got all the virus / malware removed

you may want to put a HJT log intothe malware forum - see my signature for a link to porgram

[Elvandil]

I doubt you are going to get those installed no matter what you do. It seems the entire set of services has been damaged. How did this come about? Was a big section of the registry hacked out or a registry cleaner used?

Your best bet would be to go back to an intact registry with System Restore. The registry is far too damaged for installation the normal way. In any case, those drivers are almost all right on the system, so there is no need or way to download them.

[JohnWill]

One thing that I've done in the past may work here.

First, do a stack reset to clean up anything we can automatically.

TCP/IP stack repair options for use with Windows XP with SP2/SP3.

Start, Run, CMD to open a command prompt:

In the command prompt window that opens, type type the following commands, each followed by the Enter key:

Note: Type only the text in bold for the following commands.

Reset TCP/IP stack to installation defaults, type: netsh int ip reset reset.log

Reset WINSOCK entries to installation defaults, type: netsh winsock reset catalog

Reboot the machine.





Next, disable the wired and wireless network adapters in the BIOS.

Open the access door on the bottom and physically remove the wireless card if you can't disable it in the BIOS.

Open Device Manager, View, Show Hidden Devices.

At this point, uninstall all of the Devices under Network adapters.

Shutdown and install the wireless card (if removed).

Restart and enter the BIOS setup, enable the network adapters.

Continue the reboot and try installing the drivers.

[Glitcher]

Downloading and reinstalling the drivers from the Compaq website sounded like a good idea, but sadly the drivers remained corrupted. Ditto for JohnWill's suggestion of repairing the network adapters with DOS commands. It turns out Elvandil was right - the registry was far too damaged to be able to repair, and only a complete reinstall would fix it. I'm not too disappointed; one thing I learned is to improve my virus protection and schedule monthly system restores so that this won't happen again. This also gave me a chance to try out Windows 7, plus the fact that I'm typing this message from the laptop that was giving me trouble shows that my connection is back up and running. I thank you anyway for your help.

[Elvandil]

A System Restore should work to replace the registry if you have any relevant points.

(Oops. I guess that was a bit late, but since I already made that suggestion and you reinstalled, I guess it was not the solution. Anyway, congrats on getting back up and runnung. Maybe you would like to have a full system image to restore when something like this happens.)

Free Disk Imaging Tools:

EASEUS Todo Backup
Runtime Shadow Copy
SelfImage (Open-source)
O&O DiskImage Express
Macrium Reflect
PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost) (Free alternative to Ghost with more features)
Paragon Drive Backup Express
Drive Image XML
G4U - Ghost For Unix (Platform-independent, floppy or CD)
DiscWizard (For Seagate or Maxtor drives - contains reduced version of Acronis)

Don't forget to make the boot CD whichever one you choose. If the machine will not boot the operating system, you can still boot from the CD and use its tools to restore the image you made on the external drive.