I have a sony vaio desktop pc model pcv-2252 that will not run past the welcome screen. Its running windows xp and if i let it start as normal i can get to the sign in screen but once i put in my password and hit enter, it freezes at the welcome screen stating "loading your personal settings". I have tried running in safe mode and last good known config, but its all the same. The only way I can get into my programs is using safe mode with networking then logging in as "Administrator". My screen is blank at this point, but using ctrl, alt, delete, I can access all my files including safari, but not IE. I tried to reinstall IE but it tells me i dont have admin rights to do that. I also tried the vaio help pages but when i list my model number it redirects me to choose a different model number. i tried all the ones listed and get an error message that the updates are not compatible for my pc. I dont have much exp with computers, so any help is appreciated. Thank you.
Firstly, IE is crap, switch to FireFox immediately. Secondly, this happened to my mom's Vaio, sorta......we had to get the OS renstalled.
Yeah.. I have seen that too.. complete reinstall was my fix as well. Puppy linux will boot and mount the drive so you can have a look at the extent of the damage.. and save your data.. In my short window to have a poke around with the system files I recovered indicated a rootkit in ntoskrnl.exe .. the core of the OS... but time was against me to go further and replacing that one file still resulted in a no boot box... investigating showed it had been infected on reboot.. just the same as before. wipe it all.. unless you are 100% sure a file is clean.. and reinstall
1st question- where do I/how do I get linux. 2nd-if I reinstall will I lose all my files (pics/docs)?
