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On 27/01/14 13:32, raymond.knowles@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > Hi All, > > I have a vintage 2000 Dell desktop running XP with > 500MB RAM. > > It used to work, but then I installed some > anti-virus software, > and now it doesn't. The obvious way > to fix it would be through > System Restore, but the problem > is it locks up before I can log > in, so I never get as far > as logging in, and thence to System > Restore. > > Has anyone > met this problem, and how did they fix it please ? > > Thanks > in advance, > Ray Knowles. I'm a lot less convinced than you are about System Restore... it's a menace, much better at destroying data than recovering your computer and I've had a *lot* of experience with it. Which is why it's the first thing I turn off in all of our Windows builds. At the risk of sounding obvious, have you tried Safe Boot (hammer F8 during the initial boot stage post-BIOS) and then logging in as Admin? Brilliantly, in Safe Mode several critical installation services are disabled so you sometimes can't actually uninstall things in Windows' intrinsic "repair mode". If you're sure about System Restore, just boot off a suitable medium (i.e., your XP installer) to get the machine up and then you can access the various Windows repair/restore modes from there. BartPE or DaRT would both be better options but you probably don't have those to hand. With less than 3 months of XP support remaining, surely it's time to just put a bullet in it anyway? To be fair, if it's the vendor-supplied machine still running the prehistoric and no longer supported software controlling your £1m genetic sequencer or £15m uranium centrifuge, you're probably going to want to ignore me and keep it running. Otherwise, migrate XP off via physical to virtual transform and don't let it anywhere near the internet ever again. I too would like to know which crappy AV product managed to render your XP box unbootable... McAfee, surely? Regards -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq