Help Me fix a borked windows

[otispunkmeyer]

my mate was having some trouble with windows,

first mcaffee enterprise ****** and he half un-installed it, then after me and another mate tinkered round abit, he found WMP had stopped working

so in his attempt to fix that, he manage to delete everything out of the add/remove windows components tab in the add/remove programs window

yes, he deleted everything

so now his computer wont connect to the net, saying its tryin to connect to site 0.0.0.1

system restore wont come up, instead it just presents a white page. basically he can boot up, but then hardly anything works. he doesnt really wanna have to do a full XP reinstall, but i think its looking that way

any help on rectifying this would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

 

[mechBgon]

I would back up his stuff first, then nuke it and reinstall Windows from scratch. Odds are high that you're going to end up doing that in the end regardless. Another option would be to try a repair-installation of Windows, search Microsoft.com for "in-place upgrade Windows XP" for the routine.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

After reinstalling, make yourself the Administrater and create a limited account for your 'mate' that doesn't allow him to access system files or add/remove programs. Remind him that paper and pencil is much cheaper and less stressful but, you might want to take the eraser off the pencil first.

 

[otispunkmeyer]

lol hes gonna hate you magnus hahaha

i pretty much figured it was gonna be un-recoverable lol