I fell for the ol' "Time to Upgrade your Norton Antivirus" ad, which was in reality a "Click Here to Install Virus" ad. Now my PC is in a continuous rebooting cycle. The instant it boots up, it reboots. Boot up, desktop appears, BAM - reboot! Rinse and Repeat. Very funny. Off to Staples it goes! And oh, gee, I can't use my laptop remotely 'cause the network software is on the PC! Yeah, I know - get a Mac. No.
Got this funky shit with my wide-screen monitor that anything except the Win desktop skews off the left side of the screen. So I can't actually see the text during a boot 'cause it's off screen. I took a blind stab at safe mode and got a DOS prompt window - that was also half off screen.
I use a program called Webroot Antivirus with Spy Sweeper. It's $40/year, but I haven't had a single problem since I started using it.
Your call. But if you don't use Norton, you won't be falling for any Norton-lookalike scareware. And if you don't use Windows, you won't be falling for any Windows dialog-lookalike malware. On Windows, those can be serious trouble. On a Mac, they're just comical. Besides, it's only a matter of time, at this point, before you do get a Mac. How do I know? You already know it's the right answer, and you're merely resisting it at this point. Maybe out of pride, maybe out of apprehension about making a platform change. Maybe just plain stubbornness. But you'll come around. They all come around...
Yarva Demonicus Etrigan. Change, change the form of man. Free the prince forever damned. Free the might from fleshy mire. Boil the blood in heart of fire. Gone, gone the form of man, Rise the demon Etrigan!
. . . I'm sorry, it's too early in the morning, I can't process the thought of Dashiell Hammett as Gilligan.
Hit F8 repeatedly right after turning it on. Gives you a few options, Safe Mode is one of them. Means it doesn't launch whatever funky crap you caught. Or just pop in the Windows DVD and do a fresh install. That works too. As annoying this is, it's really not a case to pay and wait for it to be returned.
Turns out Staples had to wipe it and reinstall windows to fix everything the virus fucked up. And now, why, why god, won't it recognize my printer and my scanner?
Ah, but they don't include a Windows disk any more! They tell you to go to the Dell website or something like that for an emergency OS repair. Of course it's impossible to DO that if you actually NEED to do that.
I hope they didn't charge you money. No wiping, no restoring, needed. Safe Mode + rKill + ComboFix + replace default hosts file (copy and paste) = fifteen minutes, totally clean PC, and free. Do it once, and you'll know how to do it every time. Whatever else they told you was bullshit.
But then he could install Windows via BootCamp and... still wouldn't have these issues. Still, it's contingent on accepting the idea that Windows is both an inherently insecure OS and that, because it is the market-dominant OS, it's the one slimeball bastards write the majority of malware and viruses for. Because it's the biggest, it's the biggest target. There's also the issue with OSX being dogmatically maligned as the "hipster" OS, which means that people won't use it no matter the fact that it's easier, more intuitive, and just gets the hell out of a man's way so that he can get his damn work done instead of spending at least a fifth of his work day dismissing moronic bullshit dialogue boxes that deliver zero useful information about problems that a 21st century operating system shouldn't present a user with in the first goddamn place.
See, what!? Are those program you buy, features already on the computer, arcane shit that only programmers know...?
USB? Did it also recognize them before installing drivers when you first hooked them up? I know with some older scanners and printers, they require drivers installed first before they'll be recognized. Though that applies to scanners more than printers. What models are they?
Yup, USB. Epson 1400 printer and Epson 2480 scanner. Maybe a couple of years old. I followed Epson's tech support suggestions which did indeed require having the printer disconnected while installing a brand-new downloaded driver. Everything seemed to go smoothly, but it still doesn't see the printer when I print. In the printers & devices window, the printer icon shows with a yellow triangle/exclamation mark symbol. I know the USB connection is okay, because a lesser, basic Epson driver allowed the printer to print.
Safe Mode - You get here by pressing F8 before the windows screen pops up on startup. Safe Mode is where Windows doesn't load any of the extras on your system. Rkill - a program that kills any unauthorized program on your system Combofix - An all in one system repair program. Works very well. Replace Default HOSTS file - The HOSTS file is kind of like an index for your browser. Viruses like to replace the good one with their own, but making a backup of the good one (copy it to a safe folder) and you can replace the bad one when viruses try to take it out. All of the programs I mentioned are free. You don't have to know programming, and all you do is double click each one, and voila, computer nice and clean again. So, altogether it works like this: So after the PC starts up but before the Windows logo shows up, press F8 a few times. That will take you into Safe Mode, then use RKill (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/rkill/), it will pop up and then disappear. After that, use Combofix (http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/combofix/), it will tell you what it's doing in laymen's terms, and then it will do it. When it's done, it will say that it's done. Then Replace the HOSTS file (you'll find it in the directory "C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts" as "hosts.dll"), with the one you keep in a folder where the virus doesn't find it. Done. I know that if you can assemble models, you can follow basic instructions. That's all these are. Once you do it, you'll realize how easy it really is, and you save a shiteload of money in the process, because this is easy work, and places like Staples and Best Buy will bleed you dry making you think it's the hardest thing on the planet to do. They'll also take the easiest route and wipe your stuff, which means you have to go back and put it all back where you had it, which is a waste of your time. So learn how to do it this way, and you'll have solved 95% of your PC problems. Seriously, I carry this stuff on a USB key. I could pop it into your USB port, and 15 minutes later (maybe 20 if the virus is really bad), you have a nice, clean computer, and you've lost nothing. You can do it, too.
