My desktop has been freezing up recently but I assumed it was a possible power supply problem. Today, I could not get my firewall to start up and my anti-virus software could not connect to update. When I went to google to try and go to the AVG site it kept connecting me to other random sites instead of the AVG site when I would click on the link. Now it won't connect to the internet at all (the network connection says limited or no connectivity). I figure I probably have a nasty virus and need to get the cpu looked at. Do you have any recommendations for places to take it?

11/30/2008 9:22:17 PM

Most places will charge you out the buttcrack to do work like that. Is this a computer you bought at a major store, or from a major manufacturer like HP, Dell, Compaq, Gateway, etc? If so, you should have some recovery CD's somewhere you can use to reformat the computer. That's all they would offer to you for a reasonable price. If you wanted them to save your data they would likely charge you $kidneys and you'd agree to just have them reformat your computer, so it's best if you just try to do this yourself.

Anyway, if you want to save your data without contaminating everything, you could probably get away with using the recovery CD's to repair your system (there should be an option that says "repair" whenever the dialogue for the recovery CD's pops up) and then go into your old user documents directory to save your documents/photos/music/whatever. After that you can run the recovery CD's again and erase everything (there should be an option that mentions that like "full system recovery") and completely eradicate the viruses from your system. From there just download any programs you had again, install some antivirus and anti spyware stuff, then work on installing all those programs and things you had on there before to get it back to normal. Some people in tech talk should also be willing to explain this once you figure out whether or not you can get recovery CD's for your computer.

11/30/2008 9:40:07 PM

Try booting to safe-mode (Press F8 repeatedly on startup) and run your antivirus. You might try safe-mode with networking and see if you can get updates. I'm not sure if it will work, but it is worth a try before you spend a lot of time/money. Otherwise, just format and reinstall everything.

11/30/2008 10:06:11 PM

I found my Windows XP OS cd. I'm ready to wipe this thing clean and reformat. Where do I go to start reformating?

11/30/2008 10:10:34 PM

If you've backed up everything you want to save, just stick the cd in the drive and reboot. Have your windows code ready, delete the old partition, create a new one.

11/30/2008 10:27:21 PM

Obviously back up your data. Windows setup will show you the partitions you have available to install Windows to. Delete your current partition and create a new one. It will then format for you.

11/30/2008 10:28:13 PM