o/t computer

[motorworks]

Downed loaded a program for my son to get music.
Well the shiq hit the fan.
When I run Ad-aware it picks up ~200 items reg files etc as well Antivir has stopped many worms etc.
Problem is when I run ad-aware it "gets them" but locks up when I try to delete them.
Shut dowm ad -aware and run it again and they are still there!!
Any help would be great
eddie
ps Stay away from those *+/king music down loading programs!!

[Evan]

The music sharing systems have been intentionally poisoned by the record industry. Unfortunately the sharing software also contains spyware. If one of my customers uses that garbage on a computer I sold them then all free support from me during the warrantee is gone. Unfortunately, the simplest thing to do to fix your computer is to re-install Windows from scratch. If you don't know how then you will need to pay someone to do it. This will entail wiping out all data on the hard drive. It just isn't practical in most cases to try and fix it any other way. There are too many liability issues that exist if I were to try and repair it and then at a later date some kiddee p0rn was found on a customers machine. The only way to be sure is a clean format.

[motorworks]

Thanks for the reply Evan.
Lesson learned!!
I have the all discs that came with the system, is it a hard to to do.
Reformat the c and reinstall the discs
eddie

[This message has been edited by motorworks (edited 01-04-2005).]

[Evan]

I'm afraid the answer to "is it hard to do" is "it depends". If you have a big name brand then you may have a recovery disk to restore the system. In that case it is easy. Or you may not have a recovery disk but the files are on a seperate partition. Or you have a standard issue Windows disk and must install all the drivers yourself, the hardest option. If you can burn everything you want to save on CD. That may not be possible depending on how polluted the machine is.

[PSD KEN]

I just done a format on this ****DELL.
Drivers were scattered to hell and gone.
Some on the 98 CD, others on the DELL RESOURCE, some on ME upgrade, and somewhere else, gets kind of blury after awhile.
As an added bonus, the moniter ones were hidden on the moniter CD, not listed in index tho, just how to turn on moniter and other inane directions. Babble, babble.

[BillH]

It's a valuable skill for sure to learn. When I was a little kid I got sick of relying on other people to service the computer, now I build my own and service my own.
Its just like machining, learn by doing. Reformat that sucker, learn from it, cherish it, love it, then get absolutely sick of computers then go play with the lathe again.

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

You can use your Ad-aware to find the registry entries. Don't try and remove them, just copy/paste the Registry paths into a text file.

Reboot your computer into safe mode and go to a console window and run regedit, or click Start->Run and type in "regedit" into the entry field.

Once you have Regedit running, click file->export and save the current registry database.

Now manually remove all of the items that were found by Ad-aware by clicking on them and pressing the delete key for each one.

Now Reboot your computer and re-run Ad-aware.. It should be clean now.... If you screw something up, reboot back into safe mode and run regedit again, then use file->import and re-load the original database before you removed the entries.

-3Ph

[3 Phase Lightbulb]

Oh, if you want to share music, use a Gnutella client. The RIAA has no control over the Gnutella network.

-3Ph