My girlfriend's computer, often used by her teenage son, won't allow me to get past the screen saver. After turning it on, it will get as far as the screen saver, then an explorer error message says it's shutting down(something about a stack dump-I just looked briefly at the details). This computer at one time had Kazaa on it, so I'm sure there's a lot of junk keeping it from running properly. Would it just be easiest at this point to reinstall Windows98, since I have a disk? And yes, I'd take the time to download ZoneAlarm, Hijack This!, Spybot, and Ad-Aware afterwards; in case my gf's son goes cruising for porn. Any help appreciated. Thanks.
PS. I had to post this twice, so I could enable reply notification, if you're wondering.
Well its a matter of is there anyhting they really need to keep from the system? You could try booting to safe mode and try and run the tools then, if they are already on the system or you can load them.
If its a machine that has nothing of importance then I would reformat. Make sure that you have a firewall up before you contect to the internt or you will get slammed right away.
I would also suggest the following
Adaware SE
SpyBot
Anti Virus
Spywareguard
Spywareblater
IESPYad
These can all be found in my signature below. Also dont forget to do your system ups right away. I have a nice tutorial in my signature on how to harden IE.
I do believe I have the same affliction on my PC that benjie1971 has. However my problem is to try and get back some files of importance that are still on the system.
I did write a post about this in the hijackthis section because I believe I caused the error in deleting something that should not have been deleted. BUT my hijackthis is set to create backup files so it should still be on my computer, my problem is trying to get back in but I cannot get past the explorer message. Can I get in through DOS, as safe mode does not work?
I apologize to benjie1971 if I should have created a new post.
Thanks
