I need to reinstall Windows XP but only have Recovery CD that came with my laptop...

Ok. I contracted a Trojan Virus on my laptop. A friend removed my hard drive, connected it to his PC and says he's now deleted the Virus but that it's screwed with my registry. My Disk Drive doesn't work, neither do my USB ports or speakers. My friend says I need to reinstall windows but I'm worried about losing my files. I've got most backed up but about 3 months worth that aren't and I can't afford to lose them.

I read the reinstall thread and it said my files would be fine, which is great, but I don't have an XP CD - only a Toshiba 'Recovery' CD that came with my laptop and cheerfully proclaims that it will delete all my files.

If anyone can help me with this I'd be eternally grateful!

 

I suggest getting hold of a Live Linux CD such as Ubuntu which will allow you to boot into an OS and allow you to backup all your files to a CD, DVD or USB stick. Then you should be safe to reinstall XP from scratch.

 

Thanks. Where would you suggest getting hold of something like that? I have an external hard drive I want to move my files to but with my USB ports not working I can't. Also, will that work if my disk drive is currently not functioning?

 

advise: next time don't let this friend help you anymore because a trojan can be easily clean up with a good detection software (Norton, TrendNet, AVG...)
he/she probably were the one that messed up your registry....

in the mean time you can go to a nearby electronic store to purchase a kit that let you hook up your HDD as a USB device and then connect it to another computer to see if you can retrieve any data.
don't know why your HDD is not functioning, have you hooked it back correctly? even if the registry is corrupted, when you boot the system, you would still see some error message like not detecting OS, missing file or something. Double check.

 

Yeah, I can't connect anything via USB so removing the hard drive and connecting it to something else will be my only option. The USB ports completely don't work. Neither do my speakers (it just can't detect them) or my disk drive. I'm not confident enough to remove the Hard Drive myself so my friend says he's gonna do it, back up my files and then reinstall everything.

I use AVG as my virus scanner, and although it detected the virus it couldn't delete it. Just my luck!

 

that sounds like the best plan