Need some help... Major Virus damage

[Deville]

Ok... Well to start off last week my moniter started going all haywire... rightaway I figured my video card was shot, but it seemed to just fix itself... I suspected some kind of virus after that and installed Norton Antivirus 05... ran live update and did a full system scan 2 times... it found all kinds of stuff and automaticly repaired, deleted and quaranteened accordingly... everything was fine for the next 3 days until this morning...

It was left on all night (As usual) but the moniter would'nt turn on after moving the mouse or hitting the space bar... I had to do a hard restart and thats when I realized my computer has a major problem...

Please note I'm not to educated on PC's so please bare with me on my self diognosis... I'm assuming I have a virus in my Bios... because the haywire screen starts right from the second the computer boots up... BTW I'm running XP Pro... when it gets to the log in screen thats when it automaticly reboots itself, making it impossible to log in, in normal mode.

I can get in with safe mode, but it takes along time, and the screen is still messed almost so bad u cant read it.

I'm running safe mode right now, to ask for help on this problem. I've tried System restore, running norton in safe mode, and even tried the repair utility on the XP CD... I dont know what else to do...

Can anyone please help me?

[n00bit]

Put your Norton Antivirus disc into your CDROM drive right when you power on your computer. If it is up to date, it should run/scan/fix your problem. If it does not, and it is a virus problem, then you might need to take it in to get fixed.

[googe]

your hardware problems have nothing to do with a virus. you do not have a virus in your bios. viruses dont cause hardware problems. actually there has never been a wild virus capable of infecting a bios. a long time ago there have been some that could flash it, but these dont spread anymore and if that were the case your computer wouldnt boot period.

its most likely a bad video card. try a different one. if not, maybe bad motherboard.

[Deville]

Originally posted by n00bit
Put your Norton Antivirus disc into your CDROM drive right when you power on your computer. If it is up to date, it should run/scan/fix your problem. If it does not, and it is a virus problem, then you might need to take it in to get fixed.

Ok... but would a bad video card make it not boot up properly? Not only that, but a few other people I know are having problems with they're video cards too... seems to ironic to me, and I'm not doubting what you said... but are you sure a virus cant be in your Bios? Only reason I say that is cause I had a friend who I "Believd" knew what he was talking about when he said... "If I virus gets into your Bios your pretty much screwed." Unless of course your a professional...

Thanks, I'll try another card to see.

[googe]

Originally posted by Deville


Ok... but would a bad video card make it not boot up properly? Not only that, but a few other people I know are having problems with they're video cards too... seems to ironic to me, and I'm not doubting what you said... but are you sure a virus cant be in your Bios? Only reason I say that is cause I had a friend who I "Believd" knew what he was talking about when he said... "If I virus gets into your Bios your pretty much screwed." Unless of course your a professional...

Thanks, I'll try another card to see.

hehe, ive heard people that "believe" they knew what they were talking about tell me that you can print a webpage then get your printer buffer infected with a virus :)

writing to the bios isnt a trivial process unlike writing to your hard drive. every manufacturer has special utilities designed specifically for each motherboard they make. there is no way you can have a universal bios image. also, you cant modify parts of a current bios, you have to wipe the whole thing out and replace it with a new one. so for this to happen, the virus would have to target 1 specific motherboard only, and the author would have had to reverse engineer the bios image, modify it it, and reassemble the virus infected version. any other attempts to modify the bios would result in turning your computer being a brick from a bad flash, if they could even flash it to begin with. if something like this actually was spreading, my boss would have me looking at it right now :rofl:

and yeah, i actually have had a bad video card that caused random reboots and garbled displays. it was an older invidia card. hardware can be unpredictable, a short somewhere in the card can screw your whole computer up. bad drivers can also cause this.

a motherboard problem, maybe caused by a power surge or a short, could make it do completely random things also. unplug the offending video card and throw a different one in and see if it behaves any better, then youll know.

[Deville]

Oh... ok, thanks Googe, you oviously know what your talking about, unlike me;) It's funny you said that video card cause guess what I'm running? Yup, it's an older Nvidia Geforce 256... Been running for the last 5 - 6yrs in here and I got it used... I just figured if it was hardware it should'nt affect the ability to boot properly, and the fact that it did this last week and then worked fine for 5 days or so... but what you said makes good sense... I'll have to wait a few days to buy a new card, any suggestions on a fairly inexpensive one? Looking around $30 - $100 range...

Haha... I can barely read my screen right now, anyways thanks for the help, I'll let you know how this works out.

[Sorath]

reformat : )

[Deville]

Originally posted by Sorath
reformat : )

No thanks... I hate redoing all my settings and installing sofware... and decides, pretty much narrowed it down to a bad video card or motherboard, thanks to Googe.

[dragonone]

it might be the ram on the video card
just try another vid card first

[Deville]

*UPDATE*

Threw another video card in, and it works perfect.:thumbsup:

[dragonone]

yeah i had the same problem 2 years ago and i was completely stumped, tried to do everything i can w/ the software

[AcuraTl]

pop in your windows xp disk, and reboot, once it loads up to the menu go to the recovery console by pressing R, then once it loads up to the C:\winodws command line, type dskchk /r i believe its dskchk might be dskchck though...that will basically reload the BIOS and what not, it will take a few hrs, but it will likely fix your problem :) shoot me a PM if this doesent work..!

[Bizkit]

Originally posted by AcuraTl
pop in your windows xp disk, and reboot, once it loads up to the menu go to the recovery console by pressing R, then once it loads up to the C:\winodws command line, type dskchk /r i believe its dskchk might be dskchck though...that will basically reload the BIOS and what not, it will take a few hrs, but it will likely fix your problem :) shoot me a PM if this doesent work..!

Did you actually read the thread?

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[Proyecto2000]

Originally posted by Deville
*UPDATE*

Threw another video card in, and it works perfect.:thumbsup:

and problem solved :thumbsup:

[dragonone]

and how can an xp cd recover bios info!? enlighten me

[AcuraTl]

Originally posted by Bizkit


Did you actually read the thread?

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead:


i did, sounded like a bios prob



just read my message!

[BerserkerCatSplat]

Originally posted by AcuraTl



i did, sounded like a bios prob



just read my message!

The thread starter posted that he fixed the problem, and it was the video card.

[googe]

and chkdsk doesnt do anything with the bios ;)

[AcuraTl]

Originally posted by googe
and chkdsk doesnt do anything with the bios ;)

eat me!

[dragonone]

Originally posted by googe
and chkdsk doesnt do anything with the bios ;)

:werd:

[403Gemini]

format c:\

[Raz]

A surprising amount of people have no clue what a BIOS is ;)

chkdsk /r fixes your MBR, even though that has NOTHING to do with anything BIOS/VGA related ;)

If DeVille or anyone else ever has a computer problem, feel free to call me 619 7549, if you're in the NW or NE i'll drop by and figure it out for you - no I won't charge you anything - Just thought I'd try and give a little back to the Beyond crew after all so many people on here have helped me out!

- Rasmus

P.s - Yes, I work with computers ;)