Tip: Jeffrey Safford
I have a Dell Inspiron 518 running Windows Vista. My kids have managed to get it infected with the virus that poses like a virus scanner – XP Antivirus 2008 (runs as XPAntivirusUpdate.exe and xpa2008.exe). I can’t manage to get this damned thing removed, so I’m just going to have Windows reinstalled.
Yeah, the Vundo trojan and all of its variants (AntiVirus 2009, AntiVirus XP 2008, WinFixer, AntiSpywareMaster, Storage Protector, Sysprotect) can be a huge pain in the butt to remove. My parents got infected by it a few months back and it was one of the more difficult viruses to remove that I’ve run into.
Symantec has a removal tool, but it doesn’t work with all of the variants. Assuming that doesn’t work for you, then you can try to remove it by booting with a Barts PE disk and scanning your machine with McAfee’s SuperDAT.
You may want to give that a try, but in the event that it doesn’t work for you then you can access your Dell’s recovery partition by pressing Ctrl+F11 when the machine is first turned on. The appropriate time to do this is almost immediately after the power button is pressed. A small message is usually displayed that offers to let you enter the BIOS (usually F2 on newer Dells) or go to the boot menu (F8 or F10, I think; it displays the appropriate key to press).
So, assuming that the partition that the recovery image is saved to hasn’t been deleted for some reason, or that the master boot record hasn’t been altered from the factory settings then the Dell System Recovery software will load and you will be given the option to reimage your drive. Their software is basically just a rebranded version of Norton’s Ghost or some other similar imaging software.
Do keep in mind that if you decide to reimage your machine that all of the data that was on your hard drive will be lost. The machine will be exactly as it was when you first purchased it – meaning that any saved documents, movies, music, settings, programs installed by yourself, etc will be gone.
Because of this I would highly recommend that you save anything that needs to be kept to a flash drive or a DVD before you go forward. After the reinstallation of Vista then you can copy the files back to your hard drive (be sure to virus scan them first, it’d be rather foolish to immediately reinfect yourself with the same malware)
If for some reason you’re unable to get to Dell’s recovery software then you can always order a DVD from them that does the same thing.
Good luck.
Responses to “How do you access Dell’s recovery partition?”
May 6th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
By the way you can use Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware and it will remove the XP AntiVirus and all Vundo entries. This is the best FREE program I have seen. I hope this helps others out there looking for resolution. Make sure to update it each time you go to run it as it updates the definition file daily. Good Luck!
August 29th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Lately, I have not been able to totally count on MalwareBytes for remove viruses. Usually a combination of tools are required.
More and more recently, I’ve seen some very nasty viruses in which a full reinstall may not be required, but it’s certainly recommended.
In the same amount of time it would take you to remove the virus and then repair the operating system files, you could have… backed up all the data, reinstalled the OS, installed the updated drivers, reinstalled the applications and configured everything to use (email, etc) and then moved the data back over to the machine.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:31 am
I totally agree with what Fort Collins Computer Repair posted… The only downside to doing a clean install vs a repair is the fact that you will loose all the installed programs you have added from the previous install… I have found that if you use Malwarebytes with other tools like SuperAntiSpyware and Trojan Remover you can usually get rid of most viruses… This is of course only if you can download and or access them…
December 14th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Not sure if anyone is interested….
My company offers a pay by the problem NOT by the HOUR solution to virus and spyware infection..and we’ll NEVER wipe out the pc!!
The method we use is patent pending and will be offered on a how to dvd…
Until the DVD is finished we do offer the service in house for a set fee of $250 and we also guarantee our work for 48 hrs, if you have any problems, questions or issues in 48hrs you can bring or ship the pc back and we’ll fix it for free…most can be done over the phone without re-shipping it back to us!!!
As we all know, it’s not about the PC anymore it’s about the priceless files that are on it!!
Now people have an option to either do it at home following my DVD or have us do it for you..
Hope this helps…
Thanks,
Joe
570-636-3050
1-888-wizkidz
December 14th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Malwarebytes is a good program, just hope your not relying on it to completley clean the pc’s your working on!! There are sooo many other things that need to be done in order to clean them effectivly as well as keep them from coming back!! In our DVD we show you step by step EVERYTHING that needs to be done!!
January 9th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
@Joe Karlick:
By any chance would this ‘patent pending’ (said sarcastically) method be “shove the hard drive in another PC, copy the files off it, reinstall the OS, then copy the files back? $250 seems a bit steep to me…..
January 26th, 2010 at 4:30 pm
My computer got that virus a few months ago and I was unnable to even run the Malwarebytes program. I fixed it by usign system restore to an earlier point.
April 15th, 2009 at 5:37 am
really a very useful information to performed dell recovery your computer..