Oh, The Old Gray Whore, She Ain't What She Used To Be
Can anyone tell me how to fix my computer? It was filled with viruses, thanks to LimeWire, a music file sharing hellhole (kids these days -- a big bow to my oldest daughter), and though I deleted the viruses, my computer is still crashing, and I can't use Word (I get a "This application has failed to start because Ms.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem" message) or anything else on this machine. Tried to used Add/Delete Programs (to get rid of LimeWire) for instance, but it's as if it's dead. Same thing when I try to do System Restore. Nothing works. And the colors are weird when I'm in My Computer, particularly the sidebar -- the background is black.Also, the other hellhole, Blogger, has been on the fritz, as usual, and I apologize to those of you who have had trouble leaving comments -- today, Blogger is still shit, and you may have more trouble with comments. I'd be ever so grateful if you'd e-mail me (it's in my profile) with any suggestions as to what I can do to fix my old whore. Thank you.
UPDATE: All fixed. Had to do a complete system recovery, reinstall Windows, yaddayaddadingdong, and I drank many, many beers during the process. Thanks to all who took time out of their day to e-mail me or comment -- you helped, and you rock!
ANOTHER UPDATE (3/21): Not it's not. You all still rock, but my machine still sucks. Boo.
posted by Ms. Lori @ 6:16 PM
2 Comments:
Yeah, so I'd recommend that you reformat your hard drive and start over....
No, really, that's actually what I would do. Although first you might want to try to "repair" windows (I believe this is what windows xp calls it....basically you reinstall windows without deleting anything....it keeps all of your old programs and settings and might make windows work. You may still have to reinstall programs that don't work (like word) though). Just pop in your windows cd while you're in windows.
You may also want to download sp2 and put in on a cd before you get started as well. There are virii out there that take advantage of bugs in windows that can infect a computer within 20 minutes of being online if it hasn't been patched first. I imagine the "repair" method will wipe out all of your updates and obviously reformatting will.
You've probably gotten advice from everywhere, but here's some of what I remember doing when my children crashed mine the last time. So far, so good...
Download AdAware SE Personal (free)from www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ I think it asks you to update its files first off. Then you click SCAN, then choose complete or full scan. Scan the 'puter. When it's done, click NEXT. You'll be amazed at the results. Make sure you're sitting down. Rightclick the results window and choose SELECT ALL. Then click on the MINIMAL THREATS (next tab, whatever it's called) tab and right-click, select all. Then delete. When that's done, choose SCAN again, and scan the ADS. Delete whatever crud's on there. You probably have hundreds that'll show up.
Microsoft has a beta version of its spyware. It rocks! It's also free. Go to Microsoft.com and search for it.
Be sure you have a good anti-virus program. Run it. Every day. Every day. Once a day.
It sounds like an old joke, but I run many layers of protection on my machine. I've been online since 1994, and the main thing I've learned is "they" are out to get you.
Run your defrag program too. That'll help.
Wish you oodles of luck!
--Ginger
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