BleepingComputer.com: chkdsk problems

Dell Laptop WinXP Pro. Laptop infected with AntiVirusPro. Customer clicked all over place to get rid of it. Needless to say computer got severely infected with all kinds of horrors. Has AvastFree on it for antivirus, Malwarebytes, and Spybot Search & Destroy. Ran boottime scan with Avast - found viruses. Used BitDefender found some more, ran malwarebytes and spybot. Got desktop icons back, ran another boot time scan, regular scan. Appeared to be clean. Restarted computer, got an error message that Microsoft Office was not genuine (not true).Restarted computer got the windows volume is dirty screen, so did a disk check. Disk check would run, restart computer and run again. Used Dell restore disk to attempt repair of os. Did a fixboot, fixMBR. Ran chkdsk /r/p found error on volume that was "corrected", restarted computer. Now still stuck in loop of "windows needs to check one or more volumes" - runs, restarts computer, runs, restarts computer, runs, restarts computer. Have also run BitDefender to see if there was something that the other applications did not see, and it showed no errors. I have a feeling that the problem lies within the error message about wga, but cannot start computer in safe mode or any other mode to try and edit registry. Is there a way to repair this without formatting the drive, causing a loss of all this person's data/pictures, etc? Just thought I may be able to use BitDefender to save pictures and emails (uses AOL). Will try this while awaiting all you smart people to help.

This post has been edited by hamluis: 29 January 2011 - 10:47 AM
Reason for edit: Moved from XP forum to Am I Infected.

Please sit tight and be patient.

I have requested that an experienced helper who specialises in un-bootable computers respond to your topic.

Thank you.

You could use a PE disk to rescue your data. (BartPE)

ATGUNWAT

Does checkdisk actually finish? It is possible the volume is marked as "dirty", which would prompt checkdisk each time, which can be disabled so windows can start normally, but its not guaranteed this will fix the problem, especially if the disk really has a problem.

Do you have an XP CD at hand?

Thanks for the replies guys/gals. I believe I have solved ths problem. for future reference for anyone else who thinks all is lost due to disk check, reboot, disk check, reboot .......... Here's how I solved this really frustrating problem:
1. Follow instructions for recovering from a corrupted registry. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307545
(Please do this VERY CAREFULLY!!!!)
2. Do a check disk from the Recovery Console (this part was very scary)
3. Do a Repair Install from the original disk (Mine was Dell WinXP Pro SP1).
4. When I did this, the only user that showed up was Administrator. Of course we all know not to use Administrator for a
user name. I created a user named owner (same as the name used by customer previously).
5. Downloaded chipset, audio, video and all other necessary motherboard files from Dell.
6. Checked disk for files that were on the machine previously (pictures, documents.,etc) Migrated all owner files to owner
with a string of numbers (this was created by doing the repair install I think)
7. Am now in the process of downloading all updates and will double check program files are working correctly.

If any experts out there think something I have done will cause problems in the future, please post and let me know. I searched the internet and googled until I was blue in the face, and none of the solutions worked until I said I would give up the ghost and try the corrupted registry route hoping that it would not destroy the files. So far so good. Thanks again for all those who tried to help me.

I'm glad to hear things are okay now. Thank you for letting us know how you resolved this!