Well once again, despite changing to a new and suposedly better antivirus program (AVG), viruses have disabled my laptop.

Courtesy of a computer shop where I brought my flashdrive to print. I immediately went to virus screen it afterwards but the viruses poured in nonetheless. Then after a virus scan of hard drive everything froze and not able to boot in Windows since then.

Have tried innumerable things (safe mode, best config, system restore etc etc) but it is looking more and more like a Windows reinstallation will be necesessary.

I have a rescue disk through which I can get into Wininternals and through that, explorer. However none of my recent diocuments are theer anymore, altho old ones are. I am thinking they may all have been infecetd and possibly are now in the AVG virus vault.

Can anyone tell me the path to find the vault? And also advise as to how, if indeed the files I need are there, I might safely extract them?

Aside from all the documents I worked on in the past month, the other thing IO really want to get is the inbox and sent box of Outlook Express, can anyone advise the path for that as well? I'll try to get it onto a flash and then onto my desk top.

Laslty any recommendations for a computer shop/guru in Bkk or Pattaya that is really good for this type of thing and speaks English well would be most welcome...

Forgot to add, OS is Windows XP Home Ed

AVG places a vault folder on every drive in the drives' root directory under the name (in my case) '$AVG8.VAULT$'

As for OE6 all folders are located (in my case) at:

C:\Documents and Settings\myusername\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{B................}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

It is easy to copy all OE6 folders/files out and re-instate them after a new install.

opalhort

AVG places a vault folder on every drive in the drives' root directory under the name (in my case) '$AVG8.VAULT$'

As for OE6 all folders are located (in my case) at:

C:\Documents and Settings\myusername\Local Settings\Application Data\Identities\{B................}\Microsoft\Outlook Express

It is easy to copy all OE6 folders/files out and re-instate them after a new install.

opalhort

Found them, thanks! Nothing in the virus vault but I have hope for the OE folder and at elast salvaging my emails!

Depending on your AVG settings AVG may not dump infected files in the vault but delete them outright.

Have you had a look at your recycle bin? they may well be there.

As for OE files they are certainly still there, you just have to locate them and copy everything out to a safe place. There are also other OE files like address book etc at a different location which you may also want to copy out.

opalhort

Thanks. Files not in recycler or vault. I hav them on a flash drive but it too was infeected and all the word doc files changed to applcations with the same number of kb so I am not sure recoverable. Currently at a shop at Porntip but I don't have much hope, they seemed fairly clueless.

If anyone has any recommendations for a shop that is any good at data recovery and repair of computers damaged by virus please give details. I spent a whole day at Porntip in utter frustration, everyplace I tried seemed to know less than I do which is saying something....

OE files on the above mentioned flash drives, if and when they are suc cessfully cleaned I'll try installing them.

In case you haven't:

Change the settings in Windows Explorer:

- show hidden files and folder

- always show file extensions

These settings are both turned off by default. With these settings you can recognize the file type from the extension.

The latest virus I have seen coming from memory sticks do this:

- make all existing folders hidden

- copy itself in the root with the same name as the folder (and a .exe extension)

Any unsuspecting user will doubleclick the folder, thus activating the virus and infecting the computer.

If this is the virus you have, this also means that probably all your information is still there!