Hey everyone,

Just got ClamWin Anti-Virus yesterday and this morning did a scan of the memory. After the scan was complete it said it found and removed approx six Trojan viruses.

I noticed all the icons on my desktop had vanished and thought nothing of it, then clicked the ClamWin box off to find a blue screen with still no icons.

I pressed the restart on the computer box and it came to the intro screen into Windows XP and stopped still not showing any icons. It's as though everything has been deleted off the computer. I'm pretty concerned about this and hope to be able to fix the problem without paying a computer I.T. guy to fix it.

I've tried unplugging the computer, starting it and pressing the restart button to restart it, only a mouse cursor shows up some screen no desktop icons or start up menu's, it's blank.

Thank you for your help.

Regards,
Jessed.

It looks like ClamWin found a virus (or a false positive) in one or more important Windows processes that were running, and it was configured to unload the processes from memory. If this was only a memory scan, however, the files/programs that ran these processes would still be on the hard drive when you rebooted. If you followed this with a scan of the Windows directory, however, and ClamWin was configured to remove or quarantine infected files, then the files were removed or quarantined and are no longer around.

If you have lost access to important system files, I think that a Windows restore from original media is needed here.

Regards,

Thank you Guitarbob,

What would I need to do to restore Windows from it's original media? Is there specific buttons I should press?

I tried putting the disc in as it loads to the point it stops loads and nothing happens it stops like it did before entering into the start screen with the desktop icons.

I also pressed a few random buttons and are waiting 20-40 mins as was suggested by the guy I bought the ClamWin from to restore the system so I'll see how that goes, hopefully my computer soon goes back to how it was.

Thanks again for your support Guitarbob.

Kind regards,
Jessed.

I was referring to re-installing your Windows operating system from the original installation CD, or whatever media it came on. Any reputable computer dealer from whom you purchased it should furnish you a copy for free/minimal charge. There will be times, such as this, when it is absolutely necessary.

Some computers also come with a pre-installed "snapshot" of your hard drive as it looked at the time everything was installed. You can restore the hard drive to this snapshot. If your computer has this capablility, your operating manual, or the dealer from whom you purchased it can tell you how to restore.

You do not need to pay anyone for ClamWin--it is free, Open Source software.

Regards,

To Jessed,

Guess the best in this case is to have the OS restored from the original media by some I.T. people. Reinstalling the OS will mean to erase completely the data contained in your hard drive so if you have no backup copy of important/personal files a tech could find the way to recover and save them on a Cd or a pendrive before reinstalling the OS again.
If you will have Clamwin reinstalled my suggestion is to keep the default scan settings (they are normally set to 'report only') so in case a file is found infected you will only be notified of its position on the system and the program won't move or erase it (unless you change scan settings and relaunch the scan). By doing this you will always have the chance to verify of Clamwin has encountered a so called false positive (that is a a file which the program dentifies uncorrectly as a threat but is not actually). Keep a real time scanner in use besides Clamwin (AVG free, Avira Antivir Free, Avast are amongst the most valuable ones which you can get for free for persional/non commercial use); you will have then a real time protection and a 'second opinion' on suspect files.
Hope this helps,
Antonio

If you reinstall Windows and do not reformat the drive, you may be able to retain your programs and data. I've done this several times.

Regards,