First off, in terms of my background, I'm not all that computer saavy, and haven't spent any time crawling around on hardware/software forums at all. I found myself on this forum while googling some things trying to sort out a problem I'm having, and thought I'd join up and see if I could get some help.
Background to the problem: A friend came to me and told me that he had a virus, another friend of his had come over and attempted to remove it and failed. He then executed a recovery through the windows recovery utility, which apparently also failed to remove the virus. I asked what symptoms the computer was showing and he said he was all of a sudden getting hit with waves of pop ups, and would seemingly randomly be logged off or the computer would restart (shut down?). Since it seemed the virus or whatever was going to be difficult to get rid of, and there was really not much of anything on the computer I told him I'd just format the hard drive and reinstall windows.
I guess his computer didn't come with a windows disc - instead it had him make some sort of recovery discs (six of them, and distinct from the system restore utility - he said he did not use these discs). I've never heard of that before, but I thought I'd go with it. After inserting the first disc and rebooting the harddrive was supposedly reformatted and windows installed. Sweetness.
The problem: He woke up today and it had powered itself off. And wouldn't turn on. The front power LED blinks, as does the LED on the back of the PSU. After reading around a bunch online I got to the point that I think problem is with the motherboard - with the PSU unattached to any internal components the PSU LED lights up without flashing, but when the PSU is plugged into the mobo the flashing resumes. From what I've been reading it sounds like it was a virus that flashed the BIOS...? Until earlier today I didn't even know what that meant, so - does that sound likely? If not, what might the problem be? If so, is there anything we can do about it? Also, what could I have done differently?
Sorry about the length of the post, and i look forward to hearing back. If there's any more info you'd need just let me know, and thanks in advance for the help!
Background to the problem: A friend came to me and told me that he had a virus, another friend of his had come over and attempted to remove it and failed. He then executed a recovery through the windows recovery utility, which apparently also failed to remove the virus. I asked what symptoms the computer was showing and he said he was all of a sudden getting hit with waves of pop ups, and would seemingly randomly be logged off or the computer would restart (shut down?). Since it seemed the virus or whatever was going to be difficult to get rid of, and there was really not much of anything on the computer I told him I'd just format the hard drive and reinstall windows.
I guess his computer didn't come with a windows disc - instead it had him make some sort of recovery discs (six of them, and distinct from the system restore utility - he said he did not use these discs). I've never heard of that before, but I thought I'd go with it. After inserting the first disc and rebooting the harddrive was supposedly reformatted and windows installed. Sweetness.
The problem: He woke up today and it had powered itself off. And wouldn't turn on. The front power LED blinks, as does the LED on the back of the PSU. After reading around a bunch online I got to the point that I think problem is with the motherboard - with the PSU unattached to any internal components the PSU LED lights up without flashing, but when the PSU is plugged into the mobo the flashing resumes. From what I've been reading it sounds like it was a virus that flashed the BIOS...? Until earlier today I didn't even know what that meant, so - does that sound likely? If not, what might the problem be? If so, is there anything we can do about it? Also, what could I have done differently?
Sorry about the length of the post, and i look forward to hearing back. If there's any more info you'd need just let me know, and thanks in advance for the help!
