BSOD! Help! Probably a virus.....

[devils casper]

2GB RAM is more than enough. LiveCDs work fine on 512-1GB RAM. Could you post the exact error message here?

[Freston]

I'm assuming the installation of ntfs support might need some swap, but without write access to the HD it can't.

I may prove my total lack of understanding by saying this , but do you need write access to back up data?
I'd say copy the files to your USB and <fdisk> those viruses into non-existence. Game, set and match.

Repartition, reinstall and rejoice, for victory is at hand.
't Should only take an hour

[asjt3]

I uncommented the universe lines, but it still could't find ntfs-3g or ntfs-config. I tried doing "sudo apt-get upgrade" which took a long time but did work for "...install ntfs-config", albeit taking up all the space and leaving me with a no space message.

[devils casper]

I'm assuming the installation of ntfs support might need some swap, but without write access to the HD it can't.

Linux needs swap space only if RAM is not enough. It doesn't matter if one is using LiveCD or installed OS.

I'd say copy the files to your USB and <fdisk> those viruses into non-existence. Game, set and match.

Repartition, reinstall and rejoice, for victory is at hand.
't Should only take an hour

Thats the actual Windows way to fix problems.

[devils casper]

I uncommented the universe lines, but it still could't find ntfs-3g or ntfs-config. I tried doing "sudo apt-get upgrade" which took a long time but did work for "...install ntfs-config", albeit taking up all the space and leaving me with a no space message.

ntfs-3g package including dependencies takes 717KB space only. Put # sign before all deb-src lines in sources.list file and try again.
OR... Download Knoppix LiveCD.

*

[asjt3]

Ok I'm going the Knoppix route. It's taking quite a while to boot though, has been on "PCMCIA found, starting cardmgr" for about 6 minutes now. Ubuntu LiveCD took about 25+ mins. to load. Is all this normal for CD-booted linux?

[oz]

Is all this normal for CD-booted linux?

No, it's not normal. Probably a hardware issue of some kind. Both of them usually boot for me at right around 1 minute, give or take a few seconds.

[asjt3]

It was getting a little too complicated so I just hedged my bets and went straight away for the recovery console in XP. I think it's worked so I probably won't need to use Linux.

Thanks to everyone for their help, especially devils_casper.

Will post back if anything else comes up.

Thanks,

alex T