Odd problem

[MasterEVC]

I got a call to fix a friends computer. Heres the problem. He says his sound isnt working and neither is his printer, but everything else is. Its a Dell Dimension 3000 if I rememeber correctly.

I get there I goto device manager, and absolutely nothing shows up. Internet works and everything else does too, except the sound and printer. I goto the sound properties under the control panel, it says no device found. I tried reinstalling all the drivers and it didnt work.

I ran spybot and it found some big things and small things, one being hotbar, when I tried to clean it up Spybot crashed and gave me an out of memory error (I had the same problem here at work, one of the PC's had hotbar and other crap, and when I tried to remove it, it did the same thing, crashed with a out of memory error) I formatted that PC and its working as good as new.


I said to get a new hdd and I will reload the OS and copy the important things over off the old drive (pics, documents, music and such) I cant format his machine he has so much on it and doesnt want to lose anything. What do you suggest?

 

[patrickv]

I formatted that PC and its working as good as new.

you formatted

I cant format his machine he has so much on it and doesnt want to lose anything

then you didn't...
?? am confused ? what did you do extactly.

If i were working on his pc,i'd take the drive home, since i already have a spare pc. I will scan the drive with NOD or Avira, remove those nasties, copy the data on mine.Providing my drive has enough space, then do a full format.
After all those i'd just take his drive back reload the OS and restore the data.
Problem solved

 

[MasterEVC]

I formatted the work PC, not that one. I could try your suggestion, I didnt think of that, could be because I was exhausted, when I got home after that I fell asleep