Expert: Brian Benosky - 7/17/2009

Question
I had 2 virus scans on my computer, i loaded a third before deleting one of the 2.  Now my system will boot up but the performance is so slow that it gets hung up on a simple task of opening something.  I was able to boot in safe mode once and uninstall one of the virus programs.  but it is still the same.  Of course i have some files that i would like to save before formatting my system. So i guess my question (s) are.  
1. Is this happening because of the virus scans or could it be a virus?
2. Since my system does boot up is there anything i can do to troubleshoot this.  
3. Can I remove anything from the dos prompt.  
Thank you
Susan

Answer
Hi Susan

As you have learned, you should never have more than one anti-virus program at a time installed on your computer.  They will conflict and lead to system instability and crashes.  It's hard for me to say how much damage was done, but your best course of action is probably to do a repair install, providing you have either a Windows disk, or a recovery partition.  The good thing about a repair install is that all your documents and programs will remain intact.  Only Windows system files get re-written.  You don't say what operating system you have, so just do a search on how to perform a repair install on your Windows.  If you have any further questions, let me know.

Brian