Member Avatar for tji

Hi all

I am not only a newbie here but also with computers - I know the basics but that is all.

My son has windows xp and the problem i believe (although could be wrong) is a virus. He had Vrt1 tmp all the way through to 10 and also svchost.exe was adding 1 per minute to his processes on taskmanager, mem usage 152K.

I have decided to reformat so have googled how to and find that the computer won't even give me access to the device manager to find all the names of his drivers before refoematting. This led me to find out that I have no access to much of the computer always being asked with which program do I want the file opening with.

Any help would be really appreciated as I can't really afford to pull money out at the moment.

Thank you for your time.
tj

Edited by tji because: puncuation!!
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Member Avatar for Xlphos

Did you/have you any security software installed?

If you have one scan your PC for viruses.

It is possible to find the drivers you need after reinstalling windows. It maybe a little difficult, you will need a piece of software to scan your PC for the required drivers. There are free ones I have never used one though but someone will know the name of some.

If you do format the drive do a proper format not the quick one.

Member Avatar for Adamsappleone

Seeing how you are having problems accessing most of the PC, I would guess that it's some sort of nasty.
Your thinking of reformatting an re-installing the OS is a good choice.
Your other option is to start a new thread in the Viruses, Spyware and other Nasties forum, but that is usually a lengthy process and not always 100% effective.
IMHO, if it was my PC, I'd wipe the HDD and do a clean install, once done , you'll be able to access "Device Manager" and update drivers as needed.

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