Is My Chick's Laptop Screwed?

[CofyCrakCocaine]

<p>Heya guys...an actual tech support-y type question.</p><p>A lil background info first: So my girlfriend has an old laptop that she got in 2002. Dell of course, who are my FAVORITE laptop people in the world. Yeah, sarcasm. Her computer has an incredibly slooooow connection...and the connection is broke too because it won't allow me to download the newest version of adaware to her computer.</p><p>Now the problem and the reason for the post: The big thing right now though, is that her computer keeps getting a pop-up dubbed 'messenger service'. It reads, verbatim:</p><p>CRITICAL ERROR MESSAGE! - REGISTRY DAMAGED AND CORRUPTED.</p><p>To FIX this problem:</p><p>Open Internet Explorer and type: w w w &nbsp;registrycleanerxp .com </p><p>Once you load the web page, close this message window</p><p>After you install the cleaner program you will not receive any more reminders or pop-ups like this.</p><p>VISIT w&nbsp; w&nbsp;&nbsp; w&nbsp;regstirycleanerxp. com &nbsp;IMMEDIATELY!</p><p>Then there's a tab to click on that says 'OK'.&nbsp;</p><p>I delierately moved the w's and .com's apart from one another so it doesn't leave a link to this site in my post that would lead poor schmucks to actually go there and get their computers infected with whatever's there. I tried to get adaware, but the chick's compy is incapable of downloading it from the internet- the connection craps out around the time it hits 500k of a 2+ MB download. It takes her comp about 15 mins to reach the 500k.</p><p>What are some solutions to this computer's problems? Is it probably so compromised right now that it's worth less than two shits? Someone already mentioned get Adaware on a&nbsp;USB key, but Im wary that it won't be able to install on her comp or even get updates. Everything chugs on this machine...and to hell with Dell's tech support. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated fellas. I don't want to have to buy chicky a new machine.</p><p>&nbsp;</p>

[patsopinion]

<p>its a virus u ass</p><p>i gave it to u</p><p>&nbsp;</p><p>there are boot cds which have all the original shit on them</p><p>dl and save all documents and wipe the fer clean&nbsp;</p>

[Don Stugots]

CCC has a chick?&nbsp; pay up reilly!

[feralBoy]

<p>It definitely sounds like you&nbsp; have some spyware/virus.&nbsp; Most likely spyware.&nbsp; You should put adware and spybot on your computer.&nbsp; Spybot is a little better in my opinion.&nbsp; If you can't download, then usb, disk or cd are your other options.&nbsp; </p><p>You may also want to make sure you have a good amount of disk space left, and also defrag.&nbsp; You may also want to clean up your startup.&nbsp; There could be a bunch of programs loading up at startup and bogging the computer down.&nbsp; You can disable some startup program by going to start-&gt;run-&gt;msconfig</p><p>Just some ideas.&nbsp; good luck.</p>

[furie]

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/furie1335/pics/logo_apple.jpg

[hafast]

I'd have to go along with the reinstallation option.&nbsp; Make sure you have the recovery disc first!&nbsp; Depending on how old the machine is, there is probably a recovery partition on the hard drive.&nbsp; I usually reinstall the OS about every year or so, just because so much crap accumulates on the system that you don't even realize is there.&nbsp; Oh yeah, don't forget to save your important files!

[OGC]

<strong>feralBoy</strong> wrote:<br /><p>It definitely sounds like you&nbsp; have some spyware/virus.&nbsp; Most likely spyware.&nbsp; You should put adware and spybot on your computer.&nbsp; Spybot is a little better in my opinion.&nbsp; If you can't download, then usb, disk or cd are your other options.&nbsp; </p><p>..... </p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">Yeah, you will probably need to download one of the spyware and/or adware programs on another machine and transfer it to her laptop via a usb drive or a burned cd.</font></p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">I assume&nbsp;she has some kind of virus protection on the laptop. Update the virus file and run it.</font></p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">If all else fails, you can transfer anything she values to an external hard drive or cds and reformat the drive and start fresh.</font></p>

[LordJezo]

<p>Have you tried plugging it in at someone elses house that has a good working internet connection and try getting the updates from there? </p><p>What OS is it running?</p><p>Like others have said, do you have a virus scanner on there? </p>

<span class=post_edited>This message was edited by LordJezo on 3-18-07 @ 6:23 PM</span>

[CofyCrakCocaine]

<p>Thanks for the suggestions buddays! We went and got a USB drive and plan on transferring adaware to her compy. She has an expired edition of Norton, so we'll have to work on getting her an updated version. I'm pretty sure it's spyware that sends those messages. </p><p>Reilly owes Stugots some serious cash!</p><p>Jackass.</p><p>:)&nbsp;</p>

[Don Stugots]

<strong>CofyCrakCocaine</strong> wrote:<br /><p>Thanks for the suggestions buddays! We went and got a USB drive and plan on transferring adaware to her compy. She has an expired edition of Norton, so we'll have to work on getting her an updated version. I'm pretty sure it's spyware that sends those messages. </p><p>Reilly owes Stugots some serious cash!</p><p>Jackass.</p><p>:) </p><p>&nbsp;see, i had faith in you.</p>

[ralphbxny]

Virus it is but now I am just over stating the point!

[Devo37]

<p>Some cleaning tools to try:</p><p>1. cool web shredder</p><p>2. hijack this!</p><p>3. adaware</p><p>4. Pest Patrol</p>

[OGC]

<strong>CofyCrakCocaine</strong> wrote:<br /><p>Thanks for the suggestions buddays! We went and got a USB drive and plan on transferring adaware to her compy. <font style="background-color: #ffff00">She has an expired edition of Norton, so we'll have to work on getting her an updated version</font>. I'm pretty sure it's spyware that sends those messages. </p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">You can download and install AVG, a pretty good free antivirus program&nbsp;<a href="http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5" target="_blank">here</a>. </font></p>

[Death Metal Moe]

<strong>richg0404</strong> wrote:<br /><strong>CofyCrakCocaine</strong> wrote:<br /><p>Thanks for the suggestions buddays! We went and got a USB drive and plan on transferring adaware to her compy. <font style="background-color: #ffff00">She has an expired edition of Norton, so we'll have to work on getting her an updated version</font>. I'm pretty sure it's spyware that sends those messages. </p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">You can download and install AVG, a pretty good free antivirus program&nbsp;<a href="http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5" target="_blank">here</a>. </font></p><p>I swear by that free Virus program.&nbsp; Got it on my desktop,my laptop, my mother's laptop, my grandma's desktop, my work desktop and another work laptop.</p><p>Works great.</p><p>Yea, scan that fucker with Spybot, Adaware and an up to date Virus scanner and it should do a lot.&nbsp; Do the scans in safe mode if it starts to fuck up at all.</p>

[OGC]

<strong>Death Metal Moe</strong> wrote:<br /><strong>richg0404</strong> wrote: <p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">You can download and install AVG, a pretty good free antivirus program&nbsp;<a href="http://free.grisoft.com/doc/avg-anti-virus-free/lng/us/tpl/v5" target="_blank">here</a>. </font></p><p>I swear by that free Virus program.&nbsp; Got it on my desktop,my laptop, my mother's laptop, my grandma's desktop, my work desktop and another work laptop.</p><p><font face="comic sans ms,sand" size="2">Yes, I used to have norton antivirus but it caused so many conflicts and was so fucking hard to uninstall that when I had to format my hard drive and reinstall, I decided to avoid it altogether and have since put AVG on all computers in the house.</font></p>

[foodcourtdruide]

<strong>CofyCrakCocaine</strong> wrote:<br /><p>Thanks for the suggestions buddays! We went and got a USB drive and plan on transferring adaware to her compy. She has an expired edition of Norton, so we'll have to work on getting her an updated version. I'm pretty sure it's spyware that sends those messages. </p><p>Reilly owes Stugots some serious cash!</p><p>Jackass.</p><p>:)&nbsp;</p><p>I'd say reformat your drive. You should store any information you need on external storage, however make sure you run these through a recent virus checker. </p>

[JimBeam]

<p>I have to do the transfer and reformat thing too based on the responsed I got on a post a while back.</p><p>The question is how do I kniw if I'm transfering all the files I need ?</p><p>Obvioulsy files saved from programs like Word, Excel, etc ... are easily identifiable but I'm concerned with some of the Outlook files.</p><p>I used Outlook for my email and dont wanna lose anything.</p><p>I know I can transfer my address book but getting any &quot; *.pab &quot; files and any folders by grabbing &quot; *.pst &quot; files but I'm not sure if there are any other files I'll miss.</p>

[rckiller]

<strong>furie</strong> wrote:<br>http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y178/furie1335/pics/logo_apple.jpg<p></p>

Ditto