Recovery(D:) drive is full. How can I fix this please?

[Tamazyn]

Excellent. Thanks for your time and assistance. Always better to ask an expert, wish I had discovered these forums before I killed my last computer. Thanks again.

[HaggisCat]

Thanks for the flattery, I don't consider my self to be an expert !

 How did you kill your last computer ?  If you don't mind me asking.   

[Tamazyn]

Well my Dad has main computer which accesses the router/internet. He refuses point black to install any internet security onto his computer and so it is riddled with problems, mainly a persistent hacker called adam. It calls itself adam PC and logs on as adam, etc. Because it is on my local network Norton automatically classed it as safe, so it proceeded to infect mine. It would erase the activities from the error logs, turn on and off the firewall, change the date and time,etc. It also put a automatic restore for system start, as a boot file. Basically trying to remove the boot file, registry keys, and trying to prevent it changing everything straight back again (coupled with desperation and more than a little ignorance),was what eventually killed it beyond repair. Unfortunately the computer did not come with any recovery disks or a disk drive for me to write them myself, so there was no way back from the damage(I wrote the recovery disks before I connected to the internet this time). The worst part was that the mouse wouldn't work at all and I had to navigate everything via keyboard mouse and shortcuts. His computer is still infected and trying to infect this, kept it out twice so far but I am understandably paranoid about anything I get "Access is denied", messages about.

P.S.. Because my Dad is an idiot who thought Norton killed his last computer(he did not have automatic update on.

[HaggisCat]

What you could try on such a corrupted computer like that is this.

Remove the hard drive and connect it to a clean computer. You have to get a special tool to connect it through USB. On the clean computer install a program like Partition Wizard and delete everything on the infected hard drive. Reinstall  new OS.

You said the infected machine came with no disc drive or rather the DVD drive has no burner ? So in that case you would have to install the new OS via flash drive. Or you could transfer the new OS to the flash drive and install it that way on the corrupted computer. If it does have a DVD drive you could use the new OS to delete the drive and take all the crap with it before installing the new OS.

It would be interesting to play around with it, you would have nothing to loose.

I have never tried doing something like that, but it would be an interesting experiment.

Tell your dad to use ESET security. It doesn't bog things down at all. However no security may detect a trojan horse.

If I am messing around in deep waters on the internet I will suddenly get all these warnings that my ESET and Windows Defender has discovered an intrusion. In fact it's those pop up windows that is the intrusion. Clicking on them lets the virus in.

I have to go shut IE down in the task manager. After all of that I delete all internet history, pass words and everything.

I have an old dinosaur computer that I use for Piratebay.org.  It has a whopping 256 MB of ram and 16 GB hard drive.

  Strangely enough it never has caught a virus, it's just incredibly slow !!

[Tamazyn]

Thanks I might dig it out and give it a try, like you said there is nothing to lose now. I have never tried to run one computer from another, probably because I only ever have one that works! You certainly get a crash course in computer management when you try to fix something major on your system, because you can not afford to buy a new one.

I actually thought it was all my fault that it got into that state. Up until I saw the same named files, processes, error messages, and patterns in programs behaviour.

Just out of curiosity do you use windows vista, or are you familiar with the way it works regarding permissions? My account is the administrator account and I have never had outside access or help on it. Yet I have Administrator(s) on all my permissions screens with full control. Just wondering if all Vista permissions screens have it on there as a default or not?

Anyway thanks for the suggestions and help.

[HaggisCat]

I had Vista on my HDX, but the OS and the laptop is gone. (sold it)

I  can't help you with permissions with Vista, but they may be similar to w7. If you right click on the item you want change then go to security in the heading, then advanced. You can change the user control to full. It's a lot of bother. Is this the answer you are looking for ?

 I also found out from one of the professors that it is very difficult or next to impossible to transfer an OS to a flash drive and install it from there.

Here is a thread where NewEd2112 wants to install W7 from an external hard drive.

 http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Operating-systems-and-software/How-do-I-boot-with-a-USB-hard-drive/td-p...

[vishnu_86]

I had same my D drive with partition got full and according to instructions i copied some files to C drive but now i am not getting the warning message while opening D drive.

[lucyocho8a]

how do i go about freeing space of the D:\ recovery drive?

[Filly3P]

My D Drive on my laptop has stopped being able to read my CD's and my DVD's.  What can I try to get it back to

the computer reading drive D?