Virus On my Friend's PC

[Myidentityisasec]

When I shut it down, it says installing updates and never ends. When I go to safe mode, it's the blue screen of death and just says "?" Also, since it won't shut down, I can't do a system restore. Please help. Thanks

 

[Hatsu]

That might just be a computer problem. If your friend has a backup, tell him to re-install Windows, then restore his stuff.

 

[XWolf]

That's not necessarily a virus - sometimes crappy windows update can do that. Have seen it before. As previously suggested, easiest fix is to back stuff up and reformat.

If he/she doesn't play a lot of games then suggest Linux to him/her, either Ubuntu or Linux Mint. Both can be run from CD to try them out first without installing. I really recommend it as they don't get issues like this and most non games windows software works on Linux (or there are free alternatives).

 

[steve-p]

if you do try Linux then install "wine" from winehq.org

it runs a lot of windows programs - not all, but most.
and often a bit faster than windows does!!!

 

[Elritha]

It's a common enough problem on windows XP, if that's what you are running. Try the following and see if it helps.

AUTOMATIC WINDOWS UPDATE INSTALLATION.
Windows XP SP2 checks at shutdown for any Windows Updates have been downloaded and not installed, then offers to install them as part of the shutdown process. Understandably, this can cause a very slow shutdown on that one occassion and, if something goes wrong, can even hang shutdown completely. To see if your shutdown problem is caused by this issue, look for error 0x80248011 in any of the Windows Update log files, particularly %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\ReportingEvents.log. If present, this indicates a corrupt local metadata store for Windows Update. SOLUTION: Click Start, click Run, type SERVICES.MSC, click OK. Stop the Automatic Updates service. Rename the c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution folder to c:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution.old. Restart the Automatic Updates service.