RandyL

McAfee VirusScan Enterprise is the suite that has a firewall. If you uninstall it you will need the means to reinstall it later as it is not free. This is not usually meant for a home computer so I'll ask if you subscribe to it. Don't uninstall everything. Once you uninstall something you will need to download it or reinstall from a disk. You can reinstall Mcafee that way if you have a paid up account with them. I also see that you have Orange Parental Control. Is it possible that you have blocked yourself with that?

PseFrank wants you to download and install the codecs that may enable you to view DVD's. I'm going to assume you have Vista Home Basic which won't have the proper codecs unless you have a third party player installed. If you follow his link you will get to this link. Download K-Lite Codec Pack If you click on the Free Download on that page you will get this link. Download K-Lite Codec Pack On that page you will see if your download does not start automatically, click here You may need to click on the notification bar at the top of your browser to allow the download. Their server seems to be unreliable at the moment so you may need to try again later. Choose Save. Go to where you saved it. Double click the file.

It would probably be helpful if we stick to one issue at a time. Updating drivers and setting screen resolutions are things that need doing after a reinstall but your original problem is solved is it not? Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus CA eTrust Antivirus I think Starbuck is going to say that you are running two AV's. That's a recipe for problems. CA Trust was probably part of your original congiguration. CA Trust usually comes prebundled with computers and I think part of the AOL package too. Personally I prefer Antivir but you need to pick one or the other.

As usual Tootech is probably right. I'll try to answer for him until he gets back. Just trying to help expedite things. Since you're just going to reinstall it later I think the normal method will suffice although it might be helpful if you can tell us what you have. Norton or Mcafee are two common ones on computers from major suppliers. Since you are using Vista you need to go to Control Panel which is probably by Start>Control Panel. There are two different views of Control Panel. Control Panel Home or Control Panel Classic View. Control Panel Home. Start>Control Panel>Uninstall Programs. Click to highlite the suite then at the top click Uninstall. Control Panel Classic View Start>Settings>Control Panel>Programs and Features. Click to highlite the suite then at the top click Uninstall. If you happen to have some versions of Norton/Symantec you might see two different things listed there. If that is the case you need to uninstall them in the correct order.

Vista Home Basic I assume. Like Match said you need the codecs as Basic won't have them.

"sptd.sys" Driver used by the CD Rom emulation program, Daemon Tools Version 4. There have been some reports of problems with this driver.

That's a good tip Frank. Maybe it should go in Tech Tips and Tricks in the same thread from Plastic Nev The art of copy and paste. I think it would be perfect there.

If my French is correct it recieved all 4 packets which means you have a connection. It is strange that both IE and Firefox can't display a page. You could try using System Restore to go back to a date before you had this problem. When running System Restore you may need to check the box to show more dates.

Thanks for picking up this thread. A very detailed post Frank. Thanks. JB logitech can sometimes be a bit difficult can't it?

Hi and welcome. We have great people here so good luck.

In the USA we say "check". In the UK they say "tic". It means the same thing although I get confused by it too.

I think AVG had an early lead back in the old days. Better marketing. I'm seeing a lot more Avast and Antivir installed these days so AVG may be losing ground in the FREE race. Maynard if you would kindly install Microsoft Security Essentials I'd appreciate it. I've heard it might be good too. After you install it I'll send you some links and files so you can test it. :p

H Twiceshy. As Starbuck said. :) Don't worry. I'll gladly remove your other post.

Not sure of some things here. If you used F10 to get to the recovery options you could have chosen two options. Restore C: Drive Restore Complete System If you used the first option try F10 again. If you chose the second option then you wiped the recovery partition that you could have used to reinstall Windows. You had the option to make recovery disks on yours. If you did make them now would be the time to use them. "operating system not found" is because there isn't one anymore. It's probably trying to boot from the hard drive and not the disk. Change the boot order in the BIOS to CD/DVD drive 1st boot device. At startup pressing or tapping the F2 or F3 should get you into the BIOS (setup). You say you have an original Vista disk. First of all Vista needs more than one DVD as the OS is massive. Is this the set of recovery disks you made from your VAIO? If these disks are from another computer or if it's full retail that's already been used on a different computer you're going to have a problem with that. Sony VAIO VGN-FW11E Troubleshooting and Recovery Guide (PDF)

Hi Michael. What a mess indeed. To be honest if it were me I would format and reinstall Windows in a case such as this. The combination of an infection, errors and the use of a registry cleaner probably trashed your system. Also take into account you don't really know or understand everything that's been done to solve these issues. The XP installation disks don't need boot flopppies. As long as the CD drive is set to first boot in the BIOS all you need to do is put it in and restart the computer. From there you can choose what type of installation you want to do. Is this XP installation disk a full retail disk or a recovery disk that came with your computer? Also it is usually helpful to know the make, model and model number of the PC.

Guide for Format C and reinstalling Windows using the boot floppy and Hard Drive. How to Install Windows 98 on a Computer with No Operating System. To create a startup disk Control Panel|Add/Remove Programs/Startup Disk You might need to run the FDisk command from DOS before format c.

Command Prompt is in Accesories. Once you type the address in it press the Enter key.

There is a high probability that you can run a hard drive test in the BIOS. Look for something like Diagnostics, Tools or SMART. It sounds like a bad drive to me.

Hi Starbuck. I just now heard about you from Nev. Glad to have you with us.

Ken is absolutely right. Borrowing a disk is against Microsofts lisencing rules. One disk, one computer. The same goes for any burned disks unless they are Recovery Disks made for just that specific computer. Note that Recovery disks are not full, retail disks. Forums usually have rules against offering support on these types of issues in order to protect ourselves. Sorry.

Hi. Just copy and paste. If you go to Computer right click the CD and selrct copy. Then right click the flash drive and select Paste. This would copy over all the files. If you look in the flash drive you will see a Folder with the name of the CD. All the files will be in the folder.

Without knowing what's in the folders I can't say. However since you already ran Malwarebytes you should also run SUPERAntiSpyware. If both come up clean and your computer is working good you're likely ok leaving well enough alone. I will warn you though that if you are downloading rar files especially from torrent sites then that is a likely possibility as to the source of your infections. I would stay away from rar files unless you know positively that they come from a trusted site as a lot of malware propogates by that method.

Even more on the problem is a better link. Also it seems that the update was incomatable with XP machines that had rootkits installed according to the ZDNet article Hackers "fix" XP BSoD rootkit. If that's true you would be wise to run some rootkit scans.

That's great. Thanks for letting us know.

Open a command prompt. Type in "ping www.yahoo.com" without the quotes. Note the space after ping. Press Enter. Were all the packets sent and received?