Reformatting laptop

ghantauke

New Member
My friend recently gave me his old laptop. Its full of spyware and virsues. He doesn't have any recovery disc. It has Vista Basic OS. I want to reformat the laptop. I happen to have a Windows XP CD which i got from another friend. I'm not sure whether it'd work the a laptop. Even if it does work I'm pretty sure I'll have to install all the drivers manually after installing XP.

So before I use the XP CD, any kind of advice would be appreciated.
 
Go to the Web site of the Laptop Manufacture and see if they offer XP Drivers. If the Laptop has a SATA Drive you may have to look in bios for a IDE mode option once you are ready to install XP.
 
It if runs vista, you may have a hard time finding xp drivers for everything, all depends on the hardware. If the license that came with xp cd that your friend gave you hasn't been activated previously then you can use it. If it has been activated, then you would need a new license key.

We can always try cleaning it up before you have the option to reformat. If you would like to try, do the following.

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware from here or here and save it to your desktop.
  • Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
  • At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
    • Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
    • and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  • then click Finish.
  • If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
  • Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
  • When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
  • Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
  • A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If for some reason Malwarebytes will not install or run please download and run Rkill.scr, Rkill.exe, or Rkill.com. If you are still having issues running rkill then try downloading these renamed versions of the same program.

EXPLORER.EXE
IEXPLORE.EXE
USERINIT.EXE
WINLOGON.EXE

But DO NOT reboot the system and then try installing or running Malwarebytes. If Rkill (which is a black box) appears and then disappears right away or you get a message saying rkill is infected, keep trying to run rkill until it over powers the infection and temporarily kills it. Once a log appears on the screen, you can try running malwarebytes or downloading other programs.



Download the HijackThis installer from here.
Run the installer and choose Install, indicating that you accept the licence agreement. The installer will place a shortcut on your desktop and launch HijackThis.

Click Do a system scan and save a logfile

Most of what HijackThis lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

When the hijackthis log appears in a notepad file, click on the edit menu, click select all, then click on the edit menu again and click on copy. Come back to your reply and right click on your mouse and click on paste.

Post the logfile that HijackThis produces along with the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware log
 
I have no problem with you running windows but XP is to out of date so I woulld then recommend a Linux OS like Linux Mint which looks a lot like XP, will run on your hardware, currently still supported and is free.
 
If I manage to get a Vista Home Basic disc (which isn't provided by laptop company), I'm still going to have to install the drivers manually. Could anyone tell me how to save the drivers before I reformat or a way to reinstall the drivers without having to manually find each and everyone of them. If it turns out to be easier than using the XP disc then i might consider getting a Vista disc instead.

Thanks
 
Just download the latest drivers from the manufacturers website for that specific model.
 
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