My emachines computer suddenly stopped connecting to the internet, which is weird, since it is directly connected to the router via an ethernet cord. I suspect a virus, since I now have no valid restore points. In safe mode, I can connect. When I run AVG the first thing it says is “msconfig.exe…cannot read” I have an authentic purchased Microsoft Windows Home edition, and a real live purchased Microsoft Windows Pro upgrade disc. It is currently running Home. I also ran Norton Ghost and made an image of the entire disc several months ago. What is the best way to get it up and running again? Repair with the Windows Home disc, erase everything and hope I correctly ran the Norton Program? I had never used it before or since, so don’t even know what steps to go through to put everything back on the hard drive. Any other advice?
By the way, the connecting in safe mode was yesterday. Today it will not do it. And a little bubble just came up saying I have an IP confilict with another device on the network.
Did you try removing the router from the equation?
Unplug the ethernet cable from the machine that comes from the router, unplug the ethernet cable from the router that comes from the modem, and then plug the cable that comes from the modem into the computer.
Before you go all scorched earth on it, try dropping in the XP home disk and
Start —> Run ---- type sfc /scannow
it will take 15-20 min and do some comparisons of your system to a clean windows disk. If it finds a bad or missing file it will replace it with a clean copy.
If that does not work you can try to run a repair install
http://michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm
If that doesent do it you will need a tech to nitpick through things like your network settings, TCP/IP stack integrity, etc.
If you don’t have anything of recent value you might just want to reload from that image.
If the image fails…then you are SOL and will need a clean reload. Might wanna back up any critical files to CD’d or an external and harvest any licence codes you might need for reinstallation.