Antoine

For the past week or so, I have had a lot of trouble with my computer. It keeps freezing as the Windows XP Home Edition boot screen (which isn't even my regular boot screen, oddly enough). It just stops responding no matter how long I wait.

So, I press and hold the power button until it turns off, and then when it reboots, it gives the error message that it didn't boot properly and the list of booting options (Safe Mode, LKGC, Normal, etc.). None of them work.

Every time it has eventually started, but I can never get it to do it the same way twice. The first day it did this I tried all of the booting options (it was also coming out of Hibernation, so I had to delete the stored data to boot) but nothing worked. So I went onto the other computer in the house to try and diagnose the problem. When I found something, I came back to the damaged one to try it. However, this time, it simply and unexpectedly booted up normally (with my own boot screen). I immediately created a Restore Point just in case and downloaded Kasperksy Online Scanner 7.0 and scanned only the "critical areas". I found 8 Trojan.Win32 malwares and deleted them and then rebooted.

It rebooted fine, so I was somewhat relieved. However, the next day, the EXACT same thing happened, and so I did the exact same thing (go to other computer, etc.) and again, it worked. So this time I did another scan of the WHOLE computer this time and found another 19 Trojan.Win32 viruses. I deleted these too and rebooted. Again, it rebooted just fine, but I wasn't as hopeful.

So then the next day, what d'ya know... it froze again. This one was very stubborn and would not work. Until eventually, I went into the BIOS and "Set Default Settings". Upon exit and reboot, it worked.

Now today, I tried this again, but this time it didn't work. However, I went into the PC Healtch thing on the BIOS settings and the CPU temperature was 65 degrees Celsius. I thought this was a little high, considering I JUST turned it on.

I then thought and remembered that I had installed a new mouse (Trackbar Emotion - using the USB port) a day or so before the whole problem started. I went into BIOS and "Reset Configuration Data", but that didn't work. So then I switched the new mouse and plugged in the old one, and it booted fine. So I thought maybe that would do it. I tried doing a System Restore to before I installed it, clicked Next and it looked like it worked. It booted up properly and logged me in like it should.

But then I got a message saying "System Restore Incomplete" and "No changes have been made on your computer". I tried another date and got the same error message.

So now I'm stumped. I hope someone will read this ridiculously long post and help me out as best they can.

Thanks.

jaggwuzzT

wow, that is one problem I haven't experienced in a long time. did you by any chance install the drivers if the mouse came with a cd? because sometimes your bios and boot can stall when you have a usb mouse connected to your computer. as for the trojans, the reason you may be getting them is because your computer may be old.

My cousin had a computer that he had for about 10 years, and no doubt when I logged on I saw an icon that said something like internet security and had some weird icon, I ran a check on it over the internet and confirmed it with kaspersky, and it said that it was a virus.

and sometimes a virus can be stubborn, so do the following.

Do an update with kaspersky.
after, DISCONNECT YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION!!! (So the virus' can't find their way back in the computer.
do a full system scan.
after that, restart your computer and boot into safe mode.
when the screen comes up and ask you if you would like to use safemode or restore to a previous date, no, to go to system restore. after it is restored to a previous date, your computer should be running like it should.

Antoine

Thanks, I will try that. But no, it was a Plug N' Play mouse, so it installed itself. So you think the safe mode restore will work? What is the difference?

Thanks for the reply

Antoine

...Also, mhy computer is not very old at all.... maybe four years?

But I am getting a Macbook this summer. Should solve "all" my problems :D

Antoine

UPDATE:

So I did as you said, and nothing. When I went into Safe Mode and went to System Restore, all that happened was the same messages:

"Restoration Incomplete"
"No changes have been made to your computer"

This is stupid... any other ideas.

Thanks.

djaburg

If we were to go back to your original post, you said that you removed the new mouse, plugged in the old mouse and it booted OK. Then you tried to run a system restore and it failed. I think you may have two issues going on. It's possible that the mouse could have caused the failing boot issue, I've certainly seen hardware cause that. If the computer is running "fine" with the old mouse, then let's look at the issue of the system restore. I'd see if you might have a errors on the disk preventing the restore from working. If the computer is on, click on START>RUN and put CMD in the blank and hit the enter key on the keyboard. From the command line type: chkdsk /r and then hit enter again. It should tell you that it can't run that now and would you like to schedule it to run when you next restart. Tell it yes. Then restart your computer. The previous command will run a full disk check and will also repair any disk related issues it finds. Once you've rebooted, try running your system restore back to a date where there was a system change. The issue you might be having is that there were no system changes between the data you chose to restore to and now.

Antoine

UPDATE NO. 2:

So, thank you djaburg, but that didn't solve anything either.

Thanks to the both of you for replying. Anyone have any other ideas?

koala

If the number of detected trojans is increasing, even after running your security scans, then you are still infected, possibly in the System Restore folder as well as other locations.

Please follow these instructions (5 pages) and post the requested logs in a new thread here.