Re-installing software after a virus attack

T

Tyster

Member
Greetings all.

A friend of mine who has a 2009 Dell laptop (don't know the model) recently got a virus while searching google for a carpet sweeper.

As a result, she is unable to use it for anything. An electronics store wanted to charge her $160 to "wipe" her system clean and re-install the software.

Can this all be done by herself? She has all of the replacement software that came with the computer?

Her main fear is making sure that every trace of the virus is gone before she proceeds with anything else.

Any help would greatly be appreciated.
 
if she has the windows operating system disc she will be fine, just insert the disc, then restart the machine, when it restarts it should come up and say BOOT FROM CD PRESS ANY KEY, when this happens press a key and the windows installation will start just follow the on screen instructions, do a clean install, and quick format the drive, when its finished you will have a brand new windows install with no viruses.
 
No need in reinstalling the operating system yet, you most likely have an easy infection to clean. Start by doing the following and posting the logs.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here, here, here or here and save it to your desktop.
  • Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
  • At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
    • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
    • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • then click Finish.
  • If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version.
  • Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
  • When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
  • Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
  • A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If you continue to experience problems after doing this, please post a HijackThis log by doing the following:

Download the HijackThis installer from here.
Run the installer and choose Install, indicating that you accept the licence agreement. The installer will place a shortcut on your desktop and launch HijackThis.

Click Do a system scan and save a logfile

Most of what HijackThis lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

Post the logfile that HijackThis produces along with the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware log
 
If you can't get into Windows normally, then try to get into Safe Mode and then do what johnb35 said to do. I love MBAM, it does an awesome job.
 
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