REFORMAT help

[ajhernandez7]

Hello,

I have a HP Pavillion N5425. I seem to have gotten some sort of virus that both the symantec antivirus program and adaware anti-spyware program can't seem to find. However, this virus has taken over my desktop and won't let me change it and it also causes my browser window to change to some website called "horseserver".

I think my only option is to reformat the hard drive, but this laptop did not come with a recovery cd (at least not to my knowledge). I have tried contacting HP and all they did was give me the run around and kept referring me to other departments and no one was any help.

I am running Windows XP.

What should I do? Please help!!!

--AJ

 

[MTDEW]

Is THIS what you have?

 

[mechBgon]

Welcome to the Forums If you have your HP documentation, see if there's an onboard recovery partition and a procedure that you can use to restore the laptop from itself.

If you would like to fight the virus, then I have a possible plan of attack I made for someone else a while back, check this thread. It would take a while to do, and you should have a router to provide firewall protection (buy one if necessary, Netgear RP614 is one that I could recommend and also help with).

I am going to make a little edit to the routine in that thread, so check it again in about 15 minutes.

 

[jessieqwert]

Have you tried running Microsoft Anti-Spyware? Do a google search to find it.
Another far shot might be to get the free XP64 from Microsoft and reformat using that. You do need XP pro and a few other requirements to be eligible.

 

[pkypkypky]

try this

if that doesn't work, do your research on google and find a fix for it. I'm sure it's not impossible to fix. If you don't mind reformatting, that might not be a bad idea. But be warned...you should find out what parts you have in your system and gather drivers up beforehand because you're bound to run into problems after you install windows. I'm talking about the regular stuff....chipset drivers, vid/sound card....even model-specific fixes listed on HP.com.

 

[FlyingPenguin]

Unless a reformat is not a pain for you, before doing that try my recommended spyware removal procedure. It works 95% of the time unless you've got one of a few VERY nasty trojans: http://theflyingpenguin.com/spyware-removal.shtml