sixtyandaquarter
Member
I have to make this quick, hopefully I won't miss anything and I'll give enough information that if someone wishes to help me they can. Sorry if this is in bad form but I only have a minute to type this before I lose internet at this place...
Okay,
I got a computer from my sister, I have no idea what she did with it. It's windowsXP home edition and the comp itself is a crappy gateway from the mid or late 90's.
Using it first for stoage I found eventually alot of Sims and Sims2 games/eps and downloads. Along with various games. I started to uninstall them, but some required disks, so I used the add/remove programs function.
I found out also the comp had massive amounts of malware in some form or another and amazingly limited internet access, about 90% of the pages I went to got hijacked and I saw nothing but spam ads for "antispyware" and crap like that, so I DL'd firefox, googled a free antifirus, DL'd "AVAST!" and ran it.
1/5th of the memory on my comp was removed, I'm not sure what everything was, but it was mostly in program files. I say I'm not sure because I ran it overnight and it automatically attempted to "fix" the files in question, if that didn't work it deleted any unfixable files.
I had set it to quarantine, but it was 8am, I hadn't slept since the last 4am before last, so I may have checked the wrong box and used delete...
Either way my windows installer is broken/damaged/what-have-you.
I get a message, when installing offline, saying:
"The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed.
This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode
or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed."
When installing something threw the net, such as Java, it says it may be do to proxy/firewall, blah...
I've tried DLing the windows installer updates and programs from Microsoft. Everyone I could get my hands on, now that I have internet at home. However they all pop up with that message - or a wrong OS message (I have XP home edition, I'm trying to install the installer for XP, but apparently it doesn't know that.)
Does anyone have any -free- ideas of how to fix this? I can't go to geeksquad or anything like that, as I would have to sell this computer and the desk it's on to afford that. I can barely afford online bills as it is.
Okay, I'm being told my time is up.
If I wasn't clear or something, lemme know and I'll try to respond with better - and more timely & better placed - information. Hopefully someone can help me.
Laters
Okay,
I got a computer from my sister, I have no idea what she did with it. It's windowsXP home edition and the comp itself is a crappy gateway from the mid or late 90's.
Using it first for stoage I found eventually alot of Sims and Sims2 games/eps and downloads. Along with various games. I started to uninstall them, but some required disks, so I used the add/remove programs function.
I found out also the comp had massive amounts of malware in some form or another and amazingly limited internet access, about 90% of the pages I went to got hijacked and I saw nothing but spam ads for "antispyware" and crap like that, so I DL'd firefox, googled a free antifirus, DL'd "AVAST!" and ran it.
1/5th of the memory on my comp was removed, I'm not sure what everything was, but it was mostly in program files. I say I'm not sure because I ran it overnight and it automatically attempted to "fix" the files in question, if that didn't work it deleted any unfixable files.
I had set it to quarantine, but it was 8am, I hadn't slept since the last 4am before last, so I may have checked the wrong box and used delete...
Either way my windows installer is broken/damaged/what-have-you.
I get a message, when installing offline, saying:
"The Windows Installer Service could not be accessed.
This can occur if you are running Windows in safe mode
or if the Windows Installer is not correctly installed."
When installing something threw the net, such as Java, it says it may be do to proxy/firewall, blah...
I've tried DLing the windows installer updates and programs from Microsoft. Everyone I could get my hands on, now that I have internet at home. However they all pop up with that message - or a wrong OS message (I have XP home edition, I'm trying to install the installer for XP, but apparently it doesn't know that.)
Does anyone have any -free- ideas of how to fix this? I can't go to geeksquad or anything like that, as I would have to sell this computer and the desk it's on to afford that. I can barely afford online bills as it is.
Okay, I'm being told my time is up.
If I wasn't clear or something, lemme know and I'll try to respond with better - and more timely & better placed - information. Hopefully someone can help me.
Laters