Just received a laptop to fix from some friends. Compaq running XP. Apparently they had Search Assistant toolbar for IE installed. Friend saw online that it was a Bad Thing and was going to uninstall it. Saw something in the Add/Remove Programs list that said blahblah SA, but after clicking on it, hit Cancel when it asked to Uninstall. However, upon startup the next morning, a window popped up telling him that Search Assistant had been successfully uninstalled.
He was looking in the Add/Remove Programs later and saw something that looked like the Search Assistant (I took notes, but unfortunately don't have them anymore
) and uninstalled it. Upon rebooting, he found that he was no longer able to login to XP.
He's running XP Home and has 2 accounts in addition to the Admin acct. None of the accounts are password protected.
Upon startup, XP looks to load normally and comes to the screen where choose which user to login with. Upon clicking a user, it generally immediately says saving Network Settings and goes into Shutdown mode. Sometimes there's a bit of lag, but other than that, it's like that for both 2 accts and the Admin.
I started it up in Safe Mode to see if I could login to the Admin acct and get around that, but the Admin acct was the same- upon clicking the Admin icon, it immediately said it was saving settings, etc. and preparing for Shutdown (which, actually just kicked back to the User selection screen).
Upon doing a Google search, it looks like the Search Assistant might possibly be called Home Search Assitant and looks to be like a fairly ugly little juggernaut of a bug once it's in the system. However, I haven't seen any posts on it stating that it's done anything like the problem I've been presented with.
Kind o' scratchin' my head on this one. Sure, easiest route would be a format/reinstall, but there's a lot of unbacked up data on the HD that my friend wants saved. So I'm looking to try to get this thing back on its feet w/o a major overhaul.
Any thoughts?
He was looking in the Add/Remove Programs later and saw something that looked like the Search Assistant (I took notes, but unfortunately don't have them anymore
) and uninstalled it. Upon rebooting, he found that he was no longer able to login to XP.He's running XP Home and has 2 accounts in addition to the Admin acct. None of the accounts are password protected.
Upon startup, XP looks to load normally and comes to the screen where choose which user to login with. Upon clicking a user, it generally immediately says saving Network Settings and goes into Shutdown mode. Sometimes there's a bit of lag, but other than that, it's like that for both 2 accts and the Admin.
I started it up in Safe Mode to see if I could login to the Admin acct and get around that, but the Admin acct was the same- upon clicking the Admin icon, it immediately said it was saving settings, etc. and preparing for Shutdown (which, actually just kicked back to the User selection screen).
Upon doing a Google search, it looks like the Search Assistant might possibly be called Home Search Assitant and looks to be like a fairly ugly little juggernaut of a bug once it's in the system. However, I haven't seen any posts on it stating that it's done anything like the problem I've been presented with.
Kind o' scratchin' my head on this one. Sure, easiest route would be a format/reinstall, but there's a lot of unbacked up data on the HD that my friend wants saved. So I'm looking to try to get this thing back on its feet w/o a major overhaul.
Any thoughts?
Facebook
Twitter