Hi, I recently had a spyware/adware attack on my laptop. Something named "System AntiVirus 2008", I tried to scan and delete using "SpyBot Search and Destroy" and Kaspersky 2009. I was fed up and started deleting the registry entries of the Spyware, though i must admit i am not an expert at this. I left the laptop to be scanned and dozed off when i woke up the laptop was stuck and on trying to restart i cant get past the Windows Log In screen and there is a strange beep sound which comes from the Laptop. On tryng to log in through Safe Mode. The system shows me two pop ups during log on. One saying paging file size very low and the other which warns regarding desktop settings which i think is a standard warning message. I must also say that on logging through safe mode i see 2 accounts. One of an Administrator and one is mine. Though i have never created a Administrator account and was under the impression that i was the administrator. Please help

" One saying paging file size very low and the other which warns regarding desktop settings which i think is a standard warning message" Is your C partition almost full? How large is it and how much free space is left? If it is you need to delete or un-install some stuff to make more free space available. We need to know what the specific messages are. You do not have everything available in Safe mode that is available in normal mode - that's normal. Whenever you edit the registry and you're not sure if you're doing the right thing, make a back up copy of the registry before you delete anything - see the Help in Regedit. When you go into Safe mode there is always an Administrator account and at least one user account - that's perfectly normal. The Administrator account is automatically made by Windows Setup - you don't see it in normal mode. If you have administrator rights, you can use either one to log on with, but the desktop of yours will probably look different from the administrator's desktop. Try this. If you have not turned off System Restore yet like many commonly ask you to do when you have malware.... - when you log in in Safe mode, when you see the window that asks Safe mode Yes or No, pick NO, and try using System Restore to load a previous restore point, with a date/time before you edited the Registry. If you HAVE turned off System Restore, try repeatedly pressing F8 while booting to get the boot choices menu and choose Last Known Good... instead of Safe mode. If that is successful, you should be able to start up Windows normally again. If you can't, boot into Safe mode with networking instead of Safe mode. If you can then start up Windows, get Malwarebytes and SmitFraudFix from the web, install them, update Malwarebytes, then boot into Safe mode and run Malwarebytes, FULL scan, have it get rid of everything it finds and then, in Safe mode, run SmitFraudFix. (If you can't download them on your computer, or you can but you can't get to where the download is, download them on another computer, copy them to a USB drive or burn them to a CD, then copy them from the USB drive or CD drive to your desktop - you may need to use Windows Explorer instead of My Computer to do that.) Then reboot into Safe mode and run Malwarebytes again. If it finds anything at all, if you still have System Restore turned on the only thing(s) it will probably find will be stuff in your restore points - if that's all it finds, don't worry about that for the time being and DO NOT turn off System Restore yet. According to info I found on the web, experts currently say malware in the restore points cannot infect or re-infect your computer unless you load the restore point it is in. You can turn off System Restore later if you like to get rid of the malware in the restore point AFTER you have used the computer for a while and are sure the malware is gone. Until then, System Restore can rescue you from mistakes you make or mistakes anti-malware software makes. If you have more than one user on the computer, you may need to run SmitFraudFix on each of the other ones if they still have symptoms. SmitFraudFix fixes many of the changes malware makes that are left over after the malware has been removed.

Thanks for the reply. but these are options which i have tried i tried all ways to start System restore but it simply does not work. I left the pc stuck at the login page for long today and it finally started but still could not see the elusive desktop.. there were two pop ups. One said cannot continue forward as we need to verify license of windows and the other one same as the Paging size pop up. On clicking OK the system again goes back to the Log In page. Also would like to mention that i have enough space in all my drives more than 10 GB. I tried to format my C drive which houses the Operating system but when i selected the option to remove the current operating system and install new one the next page showed the following message. "There was no Hard Disk detected on your pc..." I cant get hold of the situation. If i cant even format the system then whats the next solution???

The Admin. account at Safe Mode Login is normal. http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... Resources for Troubleshooting Startup Problems in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... How to Configure Paging Files for Optimization and Recovery in Windows XP http://support.microsoft.com/defaul... How to Clear the Windows Paging File at Shutdown

@Chuck 2 Please could someone tell me why am i not able to format this system. Like i have mentioned above On trying to format. The following message is displayed "The Hard Disk on the system could not be detected. Please make sure that all your hardwards is .... "

If you're impatient and you just want to give up and reload Windows, you can do that, but that's very short sighted. It takes only an hour or so to run Setup but that's only the first step. It may take you days to get your software back to the way it was. And - unless you take steps to back up data from the drive you don't want to lose before you run a regular Setup, you will lose everything you have added yourself to the partition Windows is on. If you want to try repairing your existing Windows installation, you can try what many call a Repair "Install" procedure if you do not want to lose all the data you have added yourself to the partition Windows is on, rather than running a regular Setup and deleting the existing contents of your C partition. That is a standard feature of a regular Windows CD's Setup, if Windows has at least SP1 updates built into it on the CD. That takes less than an hour to try. If that doesn't fix what is wrong with your Windows, you can then run a regular Windows Setup. I/We can provide directions for how to do that Repair "Install" procedure, although I think it's more appropriate to call it a Repair Setup procedure, because what you're actually doing is running Setup again without deleting the vast majority of the data already on the Windows partition. If you go that route - there are a few things you need to do as well after Setup has finished - you will probably still need to remove the malware using Malwarebytes and SmitFraudFix as I have previously told you about, then your Windows installation should be fine again. If you still have the original Toshiba software on this computer, if you want to load that again, you DO NOT want to load Windows from a regular CD. That will only reload Windows, and none of the other software you had on the computer will be there. If you want to reload the original Toshiba software installation for your model, you need to run a Recovery procedure, using the proper CD or set of CDs. If you use the proper Toshiba Recovery CD or set of CDs, it already has all the drivers necessary for your computer's components, your SATA hard drive will be seen automatically, and all the other software that originally came with the computer will be there. However, that requires you have already made a single Recovery CD that you can use along with the original contents of the second partition on your original hard drive , or a Recovery CD set to reload the contents of the whole drive, by using a Toshiba supplied program to make it/those. If you did not do that, if your model is not more than about 5 years old, you may be able to order a Recovery CD set from the Toshiba web site. ... If you mean you tried booting the computer using a regular Windows CD, and at the end of the initial loading of the Setup files from the CD it couldn't find the hard drive, that is because - the motherboard's bios Setup has the SATA controller(s) detection in SATA or RAID SATA mode - you have a SATA hard drive, connected to a SATA drive controller on the motherboard, the regular Windows CD does not have the drivers built in needed to recognize the SATA drive controller, and since Setup can't recognize the SATA drive controller, it can't see the SATA drive(s). ... You have two main choices in that case. - you can go into the the motherboard's bios Setup and set the SATA controller(s) detection to IDE compatible mode, or similar. If you do that, the regular Windows CD Setup will see your hard drive fine, but it will be in IDE compatible mode. Once Windows has been loaded, you can load the SATA controller drivers, then go into the motherboard's bios Setup and set the SATA controller(s) detection to SATA ot RAID SATA mode. - you can leave the motherboard's bios Setup set to have the SATA drive controller(s) in SATA or RAID SATA mode, but that requires you either: - press F6 at the beginning of Windows Setup when you see "Press F6 to provide SCSI drivers" or similar while loading files from the CD, and provide the proper SATA drivers on a floppy disk in a floppy drive. Setup will not look anywhere for the SATA drivers but on a floppy disk in a floppy drive - most USB connected floppy drive models cannot be recognozed by Setup (although if you want to buy one, I have a short list of recent models that are detected by Setup). - or - you make yourself a bootable slipstreamed burned CD that has the contents of your Windows CD along with the proper SATA drivers integrated into it. Windows Setup will then find the SATA controller drivers automatically and will be able to see your SATA drive. .......