A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down....

[gooberguy]

Hey all,

so I have my friends laptop, which was bogged with viri, and i downloaded combofix to get rid of them. running combofix resulted in the message "a rootkit has been detected, windows will now restart" upon restart i get the following blue screen...

A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer

then some bs about restarting and scanning for viruses

says to run chkdsk /f to check for harddrive corruption, then technical information:

***STOP: 0x0000007B (0xF88DC524,0xC00000034,0x000000,0x000000)

safe mode, last good, windows recovery console all result in this screen. any ideas? im desperate as i dont want to give this friends computer back worse off then it was (cant even boot into windows now)

edit: the computer is a windows XP if that matters

[aedipuss]

if you can boot a window xp cd you might be able to try the recovery console. maybe try fixmbr and/or chkdsk /f. if the mbr was damaged the drive won't boot. if that doesn't help maybe try to do a repair install. and next time don't use combofix. it's not meant for the average person and there are warnings about this type of problem everywhere you can download it. and still people run it...

[Loader09]

I know what caused this. Combofix detected a false-positive which was a critical system file to windows, you need a system restore, aedipuss is right, dont use combofix, but hitman pro

[Bjs]

Only repair install or where this fails, clean reinstall

It may not have been a false positive detected ... only someone with experience and having access to the affected system would be able to know with any accuracy

Use a bootable linux to recover and backup user files

[jman98]

Hey all,

so I have my friends laptop, which was bogged with viri,

"Viri" is NOT the correct plural for "virus" in English. It's "viruses". See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_-us
for an explanation. There's also an explanation of the correct plural of "octopus" which is not "octopi" as some think.

I apologize for the grammar lesson, but I don't like seeing the incorrect "i" plural that many use.

[JohnnyBob]

Hey all,

so I have my friends laptop, which was bogged with viri,

"Viri" is NOT the correct plural for "virus" in English. It's "viruses". See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plural_form_of_words_ending_in_-us
for an explanation. There's also an explanation of the correct plural of "octopus" which is not "octopi" as some think.

I apologize for the grammar lesson, but I don't like seeing the incorrect "i" plural that many use.

According to my dictionary, octopusi is an acceptable alternate to octopuses, and I suspect some modern dictionaries say similarly for viri. However I prefer it as in the James Bond movie, octopussy. So is the plural of mouse mouses or mice?

[Jim44]

According to my dictionary, octopusi is an acceptable alternate to octopuses, and I suspect some modern dictionaries say similarly for viri.

Being curious, I decided to look. Both Dictionary.com and M-W.com (Merriam Webster) show the plural as "viruses" and have no entry for "virii" or "viri".

(Not that I didn't trust Wikipedia.... )