[SGVLUG] Need help with clearing popups from windows system

[Alex Roston]

I haven't fiddled much with Windows since Win98, but at that time 
reinstalling windows was the key to fixing everything. It would look 
around the hard drive and find files it knows about, and install them in 
the registry so you wouldn't have problems. Since then, MS has gone the 
"System restore" route so they don't have to include Windoze disks with 
every OEM system, and can force people to buy Windoze disks separately. 
I don't think they've they've buggered up the "fix by reinstalling" 
process in service of this policy.

At this point (WinXP) well behaved Windows apps store their per-user 
settings in the "Documents and Settings" directory, which is 
more-or-less equivalent to the "home" directory in Linux, so you won't 
find application information stored all over the hard drive, unless:

1.) It's a one user, (or at least one login) machine.

2.) The user is an Administrator

3.) The user overwrites system settings such that their application data 
is not stored in the "Documents and Settings" folder in the 
"Administrator" subfolder.

or

4.) The system is a legacy system that's been upgraded from 
3.1/'95/98/ME and stuff is all over the drive even though modern Windows 
systems prohibit this.

But Windows does not keep user files on a separete partition.

Alex



Claude Felizardo wrote:

> On 9/5/06, Alex Roston <tungtung at pacbell.net> wrote:
>
>> Emerson, Tom wrote:
>>
>> >>You'll need to replace that one.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >
>> >I think she uses some sites that are not firefox friendly...  (or,
>> >rather, are too deeply entrenched in IE)
>> >
>> >
>> I meant you'll have to replace whatever file the adware has attached
>> itself to, either by completely reinstalling windows, (which shouldn't
>> cause problems w/the current data and settings, but make a backup
>> anyway) or replacing the single file. The "right" way to do this is to
>> turn the computer off, then boot from the CD-ROM drive, so current
>> software can't affect the reinstall process. I haven't fooled with it
>> lately, but at one point it was possible to do a "hot" reinstall of
>> Windows, and this didn't work very well for replacing files which had
>> been deliberately buggered.
>>
>> Alex
>
>
> Hang on, are you saying it is possible to reinstall windoze on top of
> an existing system and not have to reinstall all of your apps?  I mean
> I thought one of the problems with windoze is that it's still
> difficult to determine if your data files are stored in a subdirectory
> of the App or in one of the "My blah" folder.  Can you repair in
> place?
>
> At least with *nix, you have your /home directory in a different
> partition so if you have to reinstall or upgrade, you just have to
> worry about system config files.
>
> claude
>