Acer Extensa 5235 problem booting

[MCKejml]

Hello,

Yesterday I got a virus on an Acer Extensa 5235 laptop. Said virus was turning on a fake antivirus whenever I opened a file, which wanted me to pay a price for a "cleanup". I wasn't able to turn anything on. Luckily, I managed to turn it off through msconfig and delete the virus files.

Right now, however, the laptop won't even turn on. The "Acer" screen goes on, the _ flickers a few times in the upper left corner, and the laptop resets. I won't even get to a safe mode. The notebook had minimal differences from the factory preset, had Win 7 and worked until yesterday. I have a OEM Win XP home CD at my disposal at the moment.

I have already tried:

1) Booting through BartPe and an .iso image of Windows XP on an USB flashdisk. To no avail; I get to the BartPe layout, but the BartPe file explorer shows no disks available.

2) Boot through the disk itself. At first, it didn't load, with the error "STOP: 0X0000007B (0xf78d2524, 0Xc0000034, 0X00000000, 0X00000000)", which I was able to circumvent by transferring from a SCSI mode to IDE mode in BIOS. When I installed Win XP, however, I had an error concerning a few uncopiable files, described for example here: - http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/20110/cant-install-xp-from-any-disk-to-any-disk. I skipped everything and the PC now resides in a "minimal" Win Xp preset. With the former Win 7 configuration, of course, absent.

I think I'd be able to fix this if I found the MSCONFIG settings for the Windows 7 I used before and which I mistakenly modified (I probably turned off something that now blocks the system from starting). Is it possible to do so through the new Windows Xp installation? The former Win 7 folder is untouched, Win Xp runs from another folder.

Thank you very much for all help!

 

[bazz2004]

I had to look up BartPE to see what it was but I think it's unlikely to save the day in your situation.

Assuming that your priority is to get Windows 7 back I'd first check that you have the Microsoft authorisation code for your copy. If it was pre-installed on the laptop there will be a hidden restore partition and you could try holding down the Alt key while tapping F10 to access it. Failing that option I'd download a Windows 7 SP1 ISO, burn it to disc, reinstall the OS and hope that there are no serious driver problems. Both options mean that everything you have installed and saved will be lost unless you have already made backups.

 

[MCKejml]

I had to look up BartPE to see what it was but I think it's unlikely to save the day in your situation.

Assuming that your priority is to get Windows 7 back I'd first check that you have the Microsoft authorisation code for your copy. If it was pre-installed on the laptop there will be a hidden restore partition and you could try holding down the Alt key while tapping F10 to access it. Failing that option I'd download a Windows 7 SP1 ISO, burn it to disc, reinstall the OS and hope that there are no serious driver problems. Both options mean that everything you have installed and saved will be lost unless you have already made backups.

Thanks for the tip! The restore through Alt+F10 had worked, although I still get Xp as the only loading system. Any ideas how to get back to Windows 7 and ideally remove the XPs?

 

[bazz2004]

It's trying to boot off the usb stick so don't have it plugged in. Can you enter the bios and check the boot order? Make sure the laptop is set to boot off the hard drive. If no joy there, set it to boot from the DVD drive and repair or reinstall Windows 7 from a disc. Sorry, but that's all I can think of.

 

[MCKejml]

It's trying to boot off the usb stick so don't have it plugged in. Can you enter the bios and check the boot order? Make sure the laptop is set to boot off the hard drive. If no joy there, set it to boot from the DVD drive and repair or reinstall Windows 7 from a disc. Sorry, but that's all I can think of.

When I made a complete repair through Acer Recovery management, I got an error Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll.
Please re-install a copy of the above file."

I thought it might happen because of the Win Xp installed, so I formatted the whole disc through BartPe. Then I made the repair again, but the error still occurs... anything? Thanks!

 

[bazz2004]

I think that when you reformatted the hard disc you burnt your bridges and now need to do a fresh reinstall of Windows 7. On my desktop I run Windows 7 and have XP as a virtual OS available to run within VMWare Player. If anything goes wrong with the virtual XP OS it can't screw up Windows 7. Not helpful in your present situation but worth thinking about when you sort things out.