Windows 98 Again

[Tonic Please]

Hi guys. Granddads comp again. He has Win 98SE. Ample disk space, good RAM, processor speed and all that. He purchased a program (bought) and downloaded it. It was Win Antivirus. It appears to be the same colours as good old norton symantec but doesn't say it is them. Anyway...ran it today, as an anti-virus checker, and it found a few things as you would expect nowadays.

He popped out, and upon his arrival, got to his computer to find it had carried out its work and recommended he quarantene. He does as advised. When the computer was restarted (I dont know why he needed to restart thinking about it :confused: but it said to ), it loaded up all the business, and once the 'clouds' had appeared, the system stopped. We have gone through all the boot-log advice you get in books, and tried countless things. No safe mode works, no starting with a start-up disk and all the normal things work. Its :mad: by the sound of it, and he has a great deal of important information and programs on it. So formatting is currently not an option. ANyway, thats the easy way out, right ;)

We get to DOS mode..Thats ok. We type in C:\ and then CD\WINDOWS. Then, by typing WIN you expect to have it load windows some other way (not sure what that means ) but anyway, we get to a BSOD (blue screen of death), and it says the following. Now, I trust someone out there will have an idea of what its waffling on about...

INVALID VxD DYNAMIC LINK CALL FROM...(this is the weird bit)... CDUDF(03) + 0000015B TO DEVICE 048B, SERVICE 1. We also get it saying VFAT DEVICE INITIALISATION FAILURE.

It goes on to say this, and that WINDOWS HAS GOT AN INVALID LAYOUT..as in, way its organised.

All since this damn program has been installed and run. So, any help would be fantastic.

Regards, Dan.

[spork]

The vfat message means the system has lost track of its file structure. Presumably the anti-virus programme has taken out files that, although infected, had a big part in running the system. Forget about getting it to boot for the moment. As you have important data to be rescued, slave the hard drive up to another PC which is fully updated with anti-virus software. You can then rescue any data you want. After that, if the PC is worth keeping at its current specification, you can fdisk the drive, format it, and then re-set it with Win98.

If you need help with any of the above, just ask.

[E-Liam]

Hi Tonic.. and Spork,

I'd not heard of Win Antivirus before, and considering what I do (PC security) half the time I'm online, I thought I'd have a look at it. Alarm bells started ringing as soon as I started googling.

WinAntivirus is the world's most trusted anti-virus solution

Then why have I not heard of it???

Basically it's a ripoff of Norton's own product, and Spyware to boot. Just to be sure, your Grandad may want to inform his bank of what's happened, just to make sure his account is secure, and he may even be lucky enough to stop payment if it's very recent. If paid by credit card, then there is also further protection there. Here's a couple of links for further reading, including a way to recoup the money. As you can see, threatening them with emails to Norton seems to be the best way, but there's no promises. The links..

http://tired-of-spam.home.comcast.net/other.html

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,9410021~root=scambusters

I'll hand you back to Spork now, but if you want any more info I'll try and dig some more up for you.

Cheers

Liam

[Tonic Please]

Thanks guys. Granddad passes on his appreciation. The matter has been solved.

Excellent stuff.

Regards,
Dan :cool: :ok:

[BOAC]

Tonic - a few years ago a friend advised me to re-install W3.1 on a drive somewhere, and THAT has saved my bacon quite a few times. Although you lose the long file-name function and may have to rename fiiles, you can at least look at things with mouse and a 'windows´type environment.

See what the experts say about it?

[Binoculars]

Well, I have to admit I'm curious. How was the matter solved? :confused:

[spork]

There's a lot to be said for being slow to upgrade. A lot of the latest nasties won't run on W98, W95 and 3.nn. If you haven't got a vulnerability you don't have to patch it.

[Tonic Please]

It was solved by my granddad waiting for about 10 minutes, and then suddenly the icons appeared! This enabled him to access the add/remove folder in control panel, and remove the program.

He then re-installed windows using a version that he obtained from a previous pprune thread regarding his computer, and everything was back to normal.

He did change his credit card number, however, with the company incase of fraud, seeing as it seems to be a fradulant company.

Dan

[spork]

If the PC isn't going to be re-set, can I suggest that you: 1) Get a good AV prog installed and keep it up-to-date. 2) Get a firewall - ditto, and 3) Install all appropriate Windows critical updates?

For reassurance you can run progs like Spybot Search & Destroy and Adaware, but if it ain't broke...

There ain't nothing wrong with a W98 PC, but it still needs protection to the right level.

[Mac the Knife]

The updates take ages to install, aren't that good and MS could drop them anytime (support for 98SE has been extended but the product has been end-of-lifed.)

So suggest you download the UNOFFICIAL Windows98 Second Edition Service Pack 1.6.2 (Freeware) from http://exuberant.ms11.net/98sesp.html

Features:

# 73 hot fixes.
# Solves 512 MB of RAM problem.
# 256-color tray icons.
# Better Notepad.
# Optimized swap file usage.
# Better WDM and USB support.
# General "USB 1.x Mass Storage Device" support.
# Adaptec ASPI 4.60.1021 drivers.
# Windows Scripting Host 5.6.
# DCOM98 1.3.
# OLE Automation Libraries 2.40.4522.
# Dial-Up Networking 1.4.
# Microsoft Installer 2.0.
# Microsoft Layer for Unicode.
# Visual Basic 5.0 SP2 runtime library.
# Visual Basic 6.0 SP6 runtime library.
# Visual C++ 6.0 SP6 runtime libraries.
# Updates JET 3.5 files to JET 3.5 SP3.
# Supports 98lite 4.7 Chubby and Overweight.
# Windows ME desktop icons.
# Windows 2000 color scheme.
# Supports custom "Program Files" directory.
# Some tweaks.

There's life in the old donkey yet.

[Better still, install a really good Linux distro like MEPIS - http://www.mepis.org/ ]