Windows XP setup/safemode loop

LoLth

okay, I should know this but....

a client had the blaster virus. Got her to restart in safemode after downloading the stinger AV from another PC that wasnt infected.

Stinger ran ok, but "seemingly" the pc refused to boot in normal mode after that - I say seemingly as personally I have run stinger on many xp machines in safemode and never had a problem booting back into normal mode.

Now, (again seemingly) stinger removed a DLL when it cleaned up blaster (to my knowledge, even if blaster infects a dll - which I doubt it does - it cleans it and doesnt remove it), so a "friend" of the client decided to reinstall XP to replace the DLL....

current problem:

On reboot, setup continues... until it realises that it is booting into safemode and then stops and reboots.... and setup continues.. until it realises it's in safemode and then stops and reboots..... etc.

Any way to break this cycle? either to continue the setup or to stop it before it does too much damage?

Safemode wa disabled to remove blaster, and I am assuming that the restore points were deleted. Is there any system restore point that could still be there? a default bare bones setting perhaps? Or is one created when the XP install begins?

any help would be appreciated,

thanks.

maxheadroom

How far does setup get?

LoLth

Havent seen it myself yet (it's being brought in for me to work on).

However, from the sounds of it, it is at the stage, where it has copied over the temp files, made the backup or existing files (assuming it hasn't been formatted) and is at the stage where you remove the CD and reboot for setup to continue.

maxheadroom

could you maybe do an emergency backup, then a clean format?


Otherwise, look in the setup error log and see if it finds anything?


Or, set boot logging, although I don't know if A) you can with setup and Where it would put the file if you could...

LoLth

clean format would be a last ditch option, too much data to be retrieved

Basically, I want to find a way to either stop the setup or stop safemode from starting (reset it to normal mode). preferrably to stop the setup though.

thanks,

maxheadroom

What's the file system?


If its NTFS, you might be able to copy NTLDR etc from a PC that's working and get it to boot straight into whatever's left of windows that way?

LoLth

Well, in the end I had to use a program called ERD commander to boot into the PC and copy the data to the network.

After that, the PC got wiped and reinstalled.


thanks for the help anyway