Long story- I'll try to make it short. I got a virus, many scans didn't get rid of it. Couldn't load Safe Mode, was told to go into msconfig and tell it to load into Safe Mode under the Boot.ini section... at which point my computer ceased to load Windows. Period. It can't seem to load Safe mode at all. Every time it's told to load Windows in the last working manner, as far as I can tell, it tries to follow the Boot.ini, hits Safe Mode and simply... restarts. Over and over. Each Safe Mode option.... restart. Load Windows with last working Config?... restart. AUGH.
Using a portable floppy drive (B:\) with a boot disk which I had to manually tell it to load. No questions/prompts appeared when I got it to load DOS using this. So now I am in DOS, at a C: prompt and completely lost a frustrated. Bootcfg doesn't work. dir shows only two things, SYSTEM~1 (a DIR) and WL_SET~2 which is an exe file.
This is an XP computer, without a boot CD - the install stuff for XP is actually on a partition on the hard drive. I have an extra external hard drive hooked up to the computer, which was labled J: in Windows, and does not have an installed OS. That Hard drive is merely my storage drive for files, and I believe it is coming up as D:\ in DOS.
All I want is to be able to get back into Windows so I can get what files I need/want off the system before reformatting.
There is one file in the Windows\Temp that may be the virus which I was going to attempt to delete. I know it isn't a vital file, but in Windows it says it's "in use" even when it shouldn't be.
Yes, I ran a half dozen virus and malware scans. Did no good. Most said my computer was clean as a whistle. Hijackthis wasn't even coming up with anything odd according to their analysis. I'm not a complete newbie to computers, but my DOS time & experience is pretty small- I started into computers limited before Win95, but didn't have much actual use till Win95 and later.
Not sure of the computer's stats other then it is dual core, 1 or 2 gig ram, XP and was fully updated (all service packs & "important" updates) as of the day before Thanksgiving when it went wiggy. One hard drive installed, the second external hard drive is USB-connected. I still have the USB floppy and Boot disk handy, I also have a borrowed XP install cd on hand.
Edited: No Recovery Console was installed, as I didn't expect Safe Mode to cause this bizzare loop. I should've listened to that little voice that questioned my husband's wisdom about the Boot.ini in the first place.