Solved Partner has lost his OS

My old man is not the most PC savvy man on the block. He clicked on a URL that he thought his sister had sent him (her PC had been compromised), his PC started throwing up warnings about sys32 files being deleted. I told him to shut it down ASAP. Eventually he did.

He had MSE installed.

When he rebooted the only thing left on his PC was IE, no Windows Explorer just IE.

I thought rather than mucking around trying to recover the data, I would just do a reinstall of Vista.

On my machine and his I have always had the first boot device as the CD, I put the Vista CD in, rebooted, it totally ignored the CD and went on to boot into windows.

I shut his machine down and double checked that the first boot device was indeed the CD, it was. Rebooted, and once again it skipped the CD and booted straight into windows.

As a rule this wouldn't be a problem as I could open Windows Explorer and boot the CD from there, but this damn virus he has picked up has deleted everything including his Windows Explorer.

Once again the only thing that was on his desktop was IE.

I am at a loss, normally the CD is read first, but not this time. To eliminate the possibility of a faulty reader, I replaced it with a known working one.

I then got a different HD to put in his machine, I was being confronted with BSOD's, then all of a sudden his on board graphics decided they didn't want to play anymore.

I built the machine for him probably now four years ago, if not longer. He doesn't like spending money on PC's, and since I built and paid for the now non working PC, I have put my foot down, and told him you did it, this time you can either pay someone to fix your machine or buy a new one, I am not going to spend my money on your PC.

Because I love my PC's, I have a spare tower, I offered it to him on the proviso that he got ESET Nod32, he turned it down because it was going to cost him a whole $50. Because I am not a totally heartless biatch, I am letting him use my laptop .

Ideally I would like to be able to get his tower back up and running, it wasn't the fastest on the block, but it handled Vista well.

Welcome
Initially, I would question the boot capablity of the CD. Are you sure it does boot?

richc46 said:

Welcome
Initially, I would question the boot capablity of the CD. Are you sure it does boot?

Click to expand...

Yup, I tried it out in my tower, although at the moment because he is not into gaming, I have left him with just the on board graphics, it appears as though that is no longer working. I am in the process of trying to find my old GPU's, so I can at least see more than "no video input detected"

I have also done a Paragon backup of his OS, but at the moment with no screen display, it's kind of hard to see

Sounds like you may not be set to ide in BIOS
How to Change SATA to IDE in BIOS | eHow.com

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode by tapping F8 repeatedly while booting up, then going to System Restore and going back to before all this happened?

(Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools or Start > Run and type in rstrui.exe )

errr fellas at the moment I am getting a no video input, which kinda makes it hard to do anything at all.

Oops, sorry. Thought you might in Safe Mode perhaps.

I have all but given up on trying to recover his PC.

As for building him another one I really cbf.

I will not let him walk into a retail shop and just buy one.

Where we live in Australia PC shops are as rare as hens teeth, which means I would need to order everything online, and then put it together for him (he would be paying for the build this time).

For the parts alone for a fair tower for him I have worked out it would roughly cost $500, including freight. Then joy oh joy I get to build it.

So I have been looking at getting him a semi customizable tower, nothing overly flash, but something that should last him.

I have found a couple of sites that do custom builds, please keep in mind he is a basic user, so I have chosen on board everything

Please take a look at the possibles I have chosen, and provide me with constructive help.

Cheers

Susan

At first glance that looks to be a good solid system for everyday use. I'm not a very good judge as I've never built a PC being lucky enough to be in a major metropolis in N. America, everything is handy but did order my current one custom built from Alienware, just before they got taken over by Dell.
I don't see anything that cries out as needing improvement and that should do a good job.