Had virus C drive not booting

Can't you backup his files with the XP system and then reinstall the system? With that much infection history that is probably the fastest fix. Someone who visits shady sites (and facebook is shady), should make a system image every day so that he can get out of a predicament like this in 20 minutes.

Maybe you want to set this up for him and set an automatic schedule each day or every second day or whatever. I would image to an external disk, but the XP disk may have enough room for it too. Here is one option to do free imaging easily: Imaging with free Macrium

supermasterpig said:

When I jump get on the other xp thats working I click into the other hard drive most of the files are not there. I dont know If i would even get any thing out of back up.

Unfortunately if you want to save any data that you no longer see on a hard drive that will require EXTENSIVE Recovery work.

As suggested best thing to do with an infection of that Magnitude is to reformat back up as much as you possibly can.

There is recovery type software you can buy its expensive also people that will do it again expensive. You can however run a scanner on the drive to test it. To see if the drive itself is bad. Probably worth doing before you format and waste time on a drive that could be going bad to begin with.

supermasterpig said:

When I jump get on the other xp thats working I click into the other hard drive most of the files are not there. I dont know If i would even get any thing out of back up.

Hmm, I wonder what happened to those files. I would double check with a live Linux distro - if you have one on hand. If not, use this one: Computer First Aid Using Knoppix It is pretty old but it works.

supermasterpig said:

What baffles me is that the recovery drive will not boot up ethier.

Indeed you have some strange things going on, ill admit that! What kinda drives are these? Brand and Connection type?

Try booting up (with your other drive) and running this tool on the bad drive.

SeaTools | Seagate

Its a diagnostics tool to test for bad head etc. Drives are mechanical so they do fail. I know it got attacked by a virus but it could very well be a bad drive also.