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Editor’s Note: This is a follow-up article for Intrusion Management for your PC.
What do you do when you power up your computer and your cursor is frozen in place?
What possibly could have happened? Yes, you recall, your computer seemed to be running very sluggishly the last few times you used it. Now, sluggish has slowed to a stop. You power off and on, to no avail. It’s frozen stiff.
You have to get Windows XP running in a minimum configuration mode called “Safe Mode”. This is accomplished by pressing the F8 key during the power-up cycle. On the first screen select “Safe Mode” and press enter. On the next screen enter the Administrator password and press “enter.” When the desktop screen is displayed, pressing “Tab” will get you to the “start button,” then press “enter”. Next use the down arrow key to select “Run” and press “enter.” Type in “msconfig” and press “enter”. On the next screen Ctrl-tab to “boot.ini” and press “enter.” Tab to
“/SAFEBOOT” and press the space key to activate the check box. Tab to the Startup tab. Use the down arrow key to select, and the space bar to uncheck, all non-Microsoft applications. When finished, Tab to the “Apply” button and press “enter.” Note: “msconfig” works with Windows 98SE, as well as XP.
Now, restart your computer.
The PC should display the desktop in “Safe Mode.” Only the Microsoft components will be running. If the cursor is operational, use it to navigate. For safety, consider copying your data files to external media at this time.
To get rid of offending applications, we are going to use two “free for home use” programs - Ad-Aware by Lavasoft and SpyBot S&D by Safer-Networking.org. If these are not installed on your computer, they will have to be acquired from the internet using another computer and transferred to this computer using portable media. First run Ad-aware. Note the offending program components, as these may help identify the offending applications that you should try to uninstall later. (Remember, we prevented them from starting in msconfig startup). Now run Spybot S&D to possibly remove more intrusions.
Now, go to start, run, msconfig, boot.ini and uncheck “/SAFEBOOT.” Tab to “Apply” and press “enter”.
Now, restart your PC. If asked, set it to “Normal Run “ mode.
At this point your PC should be running normally. All the applications you turned off in the msconfig-startup window have not been started. Each of these are still suspect until removed or tested by running them and then running Ad-Aware and Spybot. Do not perform any software upgrades or installations until all the “startup” entries are activated. Verify your firewall is working correctly. Update your XP operating system.
This is a lengthy procedure, and there are three possible, but less desirable,
alternatives:
1.) Have the system recovery performed by a service technician.
2.) Replace the PC with a new one and reinstall all specifications
3.) Run the system recovery process (assuming you can get it into “safe mode”) and reinstall all applications.
In all cases, recovering your data in “safe mode” is a first priority.
Now is the time to learn intrusion prevention from last month’s dacs.doc article and “walk-the-talk.”
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