Windows XP Troubleshooting

[jonnyp138]

Hi, this is the first time I have posted here so I thought i'd start with a problem on my mums pc that has me stumped!!

Here goes....First of all I think that the initial problem was a virus as I couldnt open IE6 as it closed straight away...no message...nothing, I connected to her pc remotely and tried running AVG antivirus but that didnt help...I tried spybot but still no joy

Now when they try to turn the PC on the screen goes black after the initial XP loading screen finishes and it doesnt do anything and when they try to boot into safe mode they get the mouse cursor with the safe mode icons in each corner and the rest of the screen is black...No logon prompt or anything
you dont even get the standard windows is running in safe mode option press yes to work in safe mode and no to sys rest.

so as you can see I really dont know what to do now, they have lost there xp disc and they live 70 miles away so I am limited to what I can do

Can anyone help????



Anybody????


Please???

 

[Vigilante]

Sorry but that sounds pretty messed up.

Do they know what happened just before this started? Weird behavior? Noises? New programs?

I suspect either serious virus trashing, or hard drive failure or other data corruption. If you can't even get Safe Mode to work properly, chances are good it needs a full format/reload.

But at the least, you should scan the RAM and hard drive for errors. Make sure the system is running cool.
If you want to, you can even take their hard drive out and connect it to your own machine to run virus scans, scandisk, spyware scans, etc...

 

[jonnyp138]

yeah, I think I am gonna have to make the 70 mile trip and take a look 1st hand...I will sort it if I am there but its just a ball ache but hey...At least I get to see my mom! Lol