Help me repair this Windows installation, with minimal tools.

October 31, 2009 9:29 AM

Trying to fix a friend's Windows laptop, which is behaving strangely.

So I need to get this thing working for a friend by Monday morning, and it is acting very strange. I had put a suite of freeware diagnostic/repair tools on a USB stick in the hopes of using them, but none of the USB ports are recognized.

So I went into control panel > hardware > device manager, and that screen is totally blank. It's like there are a whole host of basic Windows services that have been somehow turned off.

Another possible clue: When I try to run the Dell Support Center built-in diagnostic, it tells me "The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed ... the Windows Installer is not correctly installed."

She doesn't have her Windows XP disc, so a reinstall is not possible. Anything else I can attempt? Any other clues I can look for that would help figure out what's up?

(Win XP Media Center edition, if that helps, on a Dell Inspiron 6000)

posted by jbickers to computers & internet (14 comments total)

One more clue: In Control Panel, I try running "Add Hardware" to get it to auto-recognize the USB ports (and whatever else might be disabled). Add Hardware will not run - I get the hourglass for maybe half a second, then nothing.
posted by jbickers at 9:39 AM on October 31, 2009

Dell? Does it have a recovery partition? That might get you rebuilt if so. Besides that, this machine sounds very broken and in need of a reinstall.

However
and
"Windows Installer..."
posted by rhizome at 9:47 AM on October 31, 2009

Use a tool like Belarc Advisor (or manually) get the Windows license key. Acquire Windows XP Media Center install media (hint: bittorrent), burn to disc on another PC, reinstall and activate with the existing key.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 9:49 AM on October 31, 2009

Wow ... OK, so on the advice of rhizome's second link, I ran services.msc from the Run prompt. Virtually every service in the list is disabled ... is there some canonical list of which ones should be turned on?
posted by jbickers at 9:54 AM on October 31, 2009

There is a whole slew of mostly unneeded services in XP. Black Viper's website has an extensive table of services that are/are not critical to the operation of XP and recommends ones that can safely be disabled and what the effect will be.
posted by TruncatedTiller at 10:06 AM on October 31, 2009

I recall working on a very similar situation recently. Customer ticket came in that she lost her network connection. I took a laptop down and plugged her cable into my laptop and the (physical) connection was working just fine. I checked her system and her "Local Area Connection" icon in Network Properties was missing (gone). (although she was getting activity lights on the physical network port when you plug a cable in) ... She had the same problem you describe, that a majority of her Windows services (all of the ones set to start "Automatically") were in fact not starting. (and any effort to start them resulted in an "Access Denied" error).

I used a variety of malware scanning tools (MalwareBytes, NOD32 online scan, Spybot S&D, SuperAntiSpyware, GMER and others) which found 2 trojan files and removed them. However I was still unable to start any system services, unable to run Defrag.. basically unable to make any change to the system (like adding new hardware) because any attempts resulted in more "Access Denied" errors. ( I was also not able to get into "Users and Groups" - so I could not create a new user to test in a different profile). I ended up pulling her drive out, hooking it up to an external adapter and pulling her data off.... then wiping the drive and reinstalling Windows and all her software.

You could try logging in as Administrator (if you havent already) .. or running CHKDSK or booting into Safe Mode... or possibly using a Restore Point... (on my customers computer, the Windows System Restore service was not running.. and I was not able to start it...

Boooo.
posted by jmnugent at 11:10 AM on October 31, 2009

I suspect something along the lines of AV2000. Fixing this sort of malware is time-consuming. Use a boot cd (UBCD) to recover data, and rebuild.
posted by theora55 at 11:13 AM on October 31, 2009

When you boot the computer hold down Ctrl+F11 or Ctrl+F11+Shift. If it has a recovery partition it should start the process of reinstalling the computer to factory settings bloatware and all. You lose everything but it's good as new.
posted by bravowhiskey at 11:27 AM on October 31, 2009 [1 favorite]

Try Malwarebytes Anti-Malware from malwarebytes.org.

Honestly, it sounds the system is completely hosed. If it's not a malware infestation, you're probably SOL - you really need a Windows XP disc. You need to do a repair installation or a complete format and reinstall most likely.

If you had a disc you could also run a sfc /scannow to check file integrity of the OS.

You might also try to do a System Restore if you can access the that function.
posted by kbanas at 12:13 PM on October 31, 2009

Really strange behavior. I've been able to turn on essential services, and it now looks/feels like a proper XP installation. It even found my wireless network and downloaded updates (now installing SP3). But it's just moving very slooooooow as far as opening menus, double-clicking programs, etc.

It doesn't seem to be behaving like it's got malware, but just like there's one switch somewhere that isn't thrown properly.

Anyway, thanks for all the help so far! It's certainly better now than it was.
posted by jbickers at 1:15 PM on October 31, 2009

Make sure task scheduler is turned on. It does other speed-up things besides just running scheduled tasks.
posted by gjc at 6:10 AM on November 1, 2009

But it's just moving very slooooooow as far as opening menus, double-clicking programs, etc.

It doesn't seem to be behaving like it's got malware

But going really slow can be one of the major symptoms of a worm or other network malware. The malware could be using all the computer resources trying to infect other computers, or attempting to send out spam, ect.
posted by Iax at 12:34 PM on November 1, 2009

Use Task Manager or Process Explorer to see what's taking up the resources. It may be that you left an essential service off, or at least one that is essential to some piece of installed software.
posted by rhizome at 10:36 AM on November 3, 2009

maybe something is turned off in msconfig??
posted by radsqd at 11:44 AM on November 3, 2009