cross posted this from the wuug mailing list
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I took off more than I could chew when I offered to clean off the
personal data of a donated dell inspiron 700m (circa 2005). I ended up
destroying the Windows OS. A virus had already removed the Windows
restore points and somehow disabled the factory install restore
partitions, even though there was no current infection of core OS --- a
fact I hadn't fully grokked before I charged on regardless. It appears
the working antivirus software had managed to isolate the offending
virus before it had shut down and on subsequent reboots it was operating
cleanly with the exception of a broken network subsystem and some
weirdness with the battery.
I had managed to restore the network and updated the Anitvirus software
and uploaded overdue security updates --- I thought I was doing OK but
had in fact released more viral code. I just don't get the Windows
mindset. On reboot the machine was lost. A particularly nasty piece of
code. It allowed the machine to run with only a slight delay at boot
time but was in fact spreading itself throughout the filesystem and a
