I.T. help needed!!! pc won't start!

[B16mts]

Hey people, i'm hoping to draw on the vast bank of knowledge that lurks on the forum.

i think i may have fubar'd my pc. on friday my virus software popped up saying it had blocked a trojan. after doin this a few times i decided to run a virus scan and get rid of it. it was found, then put in quarantine by the software, so i then deleted the file to completely get rid of the problem.

at the end of the day i shut down the pc as normal. Now it will not reboot atall!! i'm operating windows XP, and when it gets to the black screen that says "windows XP" with a little blue "nightrider" style bar going accross, after a few sweeps accross it stops, then the whole thing shuts off, and it starts up again.

i've tried booting in safe mode, and also in "last known working configuration", both with exactly the same result. The only thing i remember about the trojan is it had something to do with winexplore in the title if that helps.

please can someone tell me what to do??

i guess i'm gonna need ot find my XP disk and reload the lot somehow. i'm just so worried we may have lost all our photo's, but more importantly our files.

cheers oh wise and wonderful beings!

Martin

[Growler]

It sounds like your boot sector may have become corrupted at some point and you have deleted the file it is looking for.

If you get your PC to boot up via the CD trying running a repair rather than a new install, that way if all goes well you should be able to keep all your data files.

If this fails you may want to install windows onto a 2nd HDD and then use your exisiting drive as a secondary and try to remove the data you want this way.

[That Ruddy Squirrel]

Can you boot in safe mode ? (tap on F8 as the machine boots up and the boot up menu will display)

If so then you need to go to Control Panel
Take System
Goto the Advanced Tab
In the 'Startup & Recovery) section click on the 'Settings' button
Untick Automatic Restart

Now when the machine is booted up you should see what the error is.


Trev

[Ava_Banana]

I had a "similar" thing happen to me during last week.

AV popped up, I let it delete a file.....on restart the logon screen showed I went to log on and it immediately logged off.

Googling showed that sometimes a virus/trojan will infect a file used during the boot process.

Googling also showed a few ways to try to re-install this boot file.....I tried a few using my XP disks but in the end got fed up (am a bit of an impatient bugger) and re-installed XP.

Lost all my files (but anything that important was cut to DVD anyway).

Good luck.....and google exactly the problem you are having....someone will always have had exactly the same problem and have tried a number of ways of sorting it.

[Growler]

Can you boot in safe mode ? (tap on F8 as the machine boots up and the boot up menu will display)

If so then you need to go to Control Panel
Take System
Goto the Advanced Tab
In the 'Startup & Recovery) section click on the 'Settings' button
Untick Automatic Restart

Now when the machine is booted up you should see what the error is.


Trev

Seems he can't even do that Trev

"i've tried booting in safe mode, and also in "last known working configuration", both with exactly the same result. The only thing i remember about the trojan is it had something to do with winexplore in the title if that helps."

[BUSHWHACKER]

Replace the rad cap.
Is the glowplug fuse OK?

[JUDWAK]

did ya install anything just before it all started?
if ansewer is no
then take off ya side and look for a watch battery take that out
and hold in the power button on ya tower for around 10 sec
then put it all back in and turn it on
sounds mad i know just try it it should work after that

[JUDWAK]

Seems he can't even do that Trev

"i've tried booting in safe mode, and also in "last known working configuration", both with exactly the same result. The only thing i remember about the trojan is it had something to do with winexplore in the title if that helps."

thats fixable mate winexplorer
do has above or fire it up from cd and do a fix/repaire with windows disk

[gwh200]

please all be aware that a particularly nasty virus is doing the rounds....make sure the anti virus is working and up to date

(and do a google on the postcard virus,its not ta real virus but is linking to another REAL virus)

[darkdezigns]

please all be aware that a particularly nasty virus is doing the rounds....make sure the anti virus is working and up to date

(and do a google on the postcard virus,its not ta real virus but is linking to another REAL virus)

[Albannach]

Start Recovery Console from yout installation (you did install it didn't you?) or the XP CD, then run chkdsk /r on your boot partition.

That fixes a shed load of XP boot problems.

[B16mts]

did ya install anything just before it all started?
if ansewer is no
then take off ya side and look for a watch battery take that out
and hold in the power button on ya tower for around 10 sec
then put it all back in and turn it on
sounds mad i know just try it it should work after that

that sounds like the easiest thing right now. mainly cos i can't find an xp disk! got a millenium one and a vista one, but can't track down an XP!

doing this watch battery thing, will it loose any of my settings/files?

cheers,

Martin

[RodLeach]

that sounds like the easiest thing right now. mainly cos i can't find an xp disk! got a millenium one and a vista one, but can't track down an XP!

doing this watch battery thing, will it loose any of my settings/files?

cheers,

Martin

It will lose the bios settings... which is like basic time an crap but nothing big!

Bios or Cmos.. one or t'other!

[JUDWAK]

that sounds like the easiest thing right now. mainly cos i can't find an xp disk! got a millenium one and a vista one, but can't track down an XP!

doing this watch battery thing, will it loose any of my settings/files?

cheers,

Martin

after its reset the bios it should replace the missing file
it wont hurt nothing if it dont work (most of the time it will)
let me know

[MattF]

doing this watch battery thing, will it loose any of my settings/files?

All of the motherboards operating parameters will be reset to their defaults. Can't see what purpose it will achieve in this context other than naff all, personally.