[KevinDunk]

Hello everyone do I need your help!!! I have a Dell Latitude D600 laptop that is my work computer running XP professional. My daughter was using it and she got a virus on it and now when the computer reboots it is just a blank desktop. I started a Windows XP repair but it is stuck at 35 minutes and says Installing devices but that is as far as it goes. I don't want to have to do a clean install as I said this is a work computer. Does anyone know a workaround for this?? Any help will be greatly appreciated...thanks to all!!

[blues_harp28]

The virus may have infected the boot files.
Try a Rescue Cd.
http://www.techmixer.com/free-bootab...download-list/

[KevinDunk]

thanks for the reply Blues. I don't think thats going to work. The file that it links for the bootable DOS is from 2008. I did find a 2010 rescue download of Kaspersky but that doesn't boot into DOS but option 2 in the list which doesnt let you do a virus scan

[srhoades]

After the computer reboots from copying the setup files hit F8 and chose debugging mode, it should get passed the 35 min mark then.

[Elvandil]

Originally Posted by KevinDunk

Hello everyone do I need your help!!! I have a Dell Latitude D600 laptop that is my work computer running XP professional. My daughter was using it and she got a virus on it and now when the computer reboots it is just a blank desktop. I started a Windows XP repair but it is stuck at 35 minutes and says Installing devices but that is as far as it goes. I don't want to have to do a clean install as I said this is a work computer. Does anyone know a workaround for this?? Any help will be greatly appreciated...thanks to all!!

You certainly can't complete the repair with it still infected. The infection will still cause problems if the installation comnpletes, might cause a corrupt installaion, and if a rootkit, may prevent the repair from progressing at all.

One of the problems with bootable AV CD's is that they sometimes delete infected system files and then the machine won't boot into Windows after cleaning. But since you plan a repair anyway, that won't be a problem. So scan and remove all that it finds. I like BitDefender boot CD, but they are all good. You may have to use more than one to get everything, anyway.