cag

I am helping a friend with his Acer Laptop, Win XP and when it switches on it is normal and then when it finishes the login routine the screen goes black/blank. My first thought was it was the monitor and the inverter had gone BUT as it will boot in safe mode with a screen the inverter must be OK. My next thought at the moment is could it be the graphics card? Someone suggested a virus but when I asked what virus turns screens off I did not get a reply. Any ideas?

TriggerFinger

Run an HDD diagnostic for your brand of HDD. If your HDD has no errors, run CHKDSK /R in Recovery Console using an XP install CD.

cag

Gone to stay with friend and so the laptop will not let me change the bios to boot up from the CD. I go into setup and do the change and save it but it does not change! never known that before.

TriggerFinger

Sorry but you mean your laptop cannot boot from CD/DVD drive so you cannot run diagnostics? If that is so use an enclosure and hook it up on another computer.

cag

Thanks for you replies I do not have access to another computer so I just switched it on and off in safe mode sometime the mouse would not work and sometimes it would for several hours and eventually it just sorted itself out. I then did update AVG, Zonealarm, Spybot and Spyware Blaster etc and there were 2 trojan horses and some spyware nothing much at all but the computer is fine now and now a Malwarebytes and SuperAntispyware are all scanning clean Thanks for all your replies and suggestions. Could a Trojan have caused the screen problem?

TriggerFinger

Could be... if it messed around with your video drivers (just guessing here). That is why I need you to test your hard drive and also with CHKDSK /R so we will know it is just not a corrupt file/driver. Also it will be good if you can use another operating system live CD. If it runs well with a live CD then for sure it is Windows file or drivers related.