Crap laptop

[Noddy made me]

Hi Everyone,
Have been "given" the job of sorting out a laptop thats been used by the worlds worst computer user, who insists on merrily clicking away on things he shouldnt.
After one such session of clicking, the offer of a "free" hard wear scan to check for viruses was to good to be true and yes, you can guess the rest.
A quicky looky this afternoon has found the thing to have more viruses that Mrs V Irus of 29 Virus St. Also when clicking on folders the little torchy thing pops up on nearly everything and gives up trying to find it.
Apart from the photos which have been saved to disc, im quite happy to send the rest into cyberspace.
So can anyone give me some pointers into formatting? the hard drive and starting from scratch with the whole thing. Its a 2yr old Dell Ispiron Laptop.
Thanks
Regards Tony

 

[centaur]

First thing to ask then. Is there a 'recovery disk partition' on the HDD to cover such events ? Sometimes there's a reminder on bootup or maybe it just gets a mention in the supplied handbook/s. Otherwise, use the recovery disk/s which should have been supplied.

If so, and after saving any files to CD or whatever (best to run them thru a virus checker before reloading them after reformatting) follow the recovery instructions. This is normally hitting an 'F' key (F11 or F12) during bootup.

After the recovery and BEFORE DOING ANYTHING ELSE, get a good Antivirus, anti spy/trojan ware and possibly a software firewall loaded up. There are plenty of free ones available, and the recommends for them are to be found in this forum.

 

[Yoda]

How long has Mr Muppett had the machine?

It might be possible to do a System Restore to earlier than that point?

 

[Steve]

Hi Everyone,
Have been "given" the job of sorting out a laptop thats been used by the worlds worst computer user, who insists on merrily clicking away on things he shouldnt.

Let me guess.

Was I right?

 

[Noddy made me]

Sorry , not this time
Its was my silver surfing father in law.
I tried to restore but for some strange reason it will only go back to march. In fact it only shows march on the calender on the restore screen
Im thinking it might be safest to clean it all off and start again. Hope to get the discs that came with the computer this week so i can have a go.
Whilst im typing has any body seen the panorama thingy on the bbc site with regards to the levels of radiation given off from wireless wifi spots. It says that in most cases its higher than the amount given off from a telephone mast ( the ones that they wont put near schools !! ) and theres hundreds of em in schools up and down the country .............

 

[centaur]

I saw the prog. 'Arrant scaremongering' was what leapt to my mind.
Attempting to equate the power transmitted from a powerful mobile phone mast with that from a wifi router is ridiculous. Firstly, radiated power halves for every meter travelled away from the source, so to compare the mast with a router is plain silly, a wifi router puts out far less than a mobile phone.....AND you don't hold it to your ear !

I'd be more concerned with having a phone transmitter mast ON the school frankly.

 

[Noddy made me]

It just gets better and better.................

No discs, no book, and ive now found that after using it for any more than two mins the blue screen of death pops up and says night-night im shutting down its for your own good etc etc.
So, How do i format the hard drive to clean it all up?
Does it nuke the whole of the drive ? and therefore will i need to "find" a copy of windows to reinstall ?
How do i resinstall it cos im guessing it wont be as easy as pop the disc in and away you go?
Thanks chaps
Anyone got a jetski for sale?..........If this rain keeps up im not gonna need the 650!
Regards Tony