Restore Windows Registry

Hello,

This is my first post on this forum.

I am trying to clean a laptop of a virus infection. The laptop was running Windows XP.

I followed my standard routing for virus repair, which is to use Malware Bytes and Avast (and Rkill, if needed) in safe mode to remove the infection.

However, this time, I ran into a snag. I believe the virus modified the registry or the startup somehow, and it was damaged when I uninstalled the virus components.

When I boot XP, I get a message along the lines of 'Cannot find/run lsass' After this, it gives me a black screen, and nothing. No task manager, no cmd, nothing.

I attempted to repair the registry using the original Windows CD, but it wants to know the Administrator password for the computer, and no one knows what it is.

So, my question comes down to this: Can I use Knoppix to either (A), reset the Administrator password, or (B), repair the registry so I can get the computer started?

I'm fairly good at following instructions, so if there's a way to do it, if you could direct me to a walkthrough or let me know the steps, that would be great.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CommieHunter

..... So, my question comes down to this: Can I use Knoppix to either (A), reset the Administrator password, or (B), repair the registry so I can get the computer started?.....

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Years of watching problem reports from others has convinced me that it is never safe to write to NTFS partitions with Knoppix. (to be completely honest there are those who think they have done it without damage, but it is a risk to do so at the very least.)

And Knoppix has no tools to reset the admin password or muck with the registery

So my answer is no, Knoppix should not be used to try to do what you want.

However, Knoppix can be used to recover files from your system, and once you have the backups (that you really should have already backed up if the data is important), you can then go ahead and reinstall Windows (assuming that you still want Windows). I prefer to back up across a network to another computer (I install a FTP server on the other computer and use a browser under Knoppix as an FTP client), but you could also back up to flash drives, or in some cases burn CDs or DVDs.