anyone ever seen a bluescreen crash like this - a frind’s son’s laptop - I suspect a bad virus but can’t find any info because the searches all relate to the Microsoft “bluescreen of death” It will boot but any attempt to connect to the net gets the weird blue and white screen. I had to grab a pic of it cause it happens real fast.
Looks more like the video (screen got damaged)
Was the computer dropped?
I’ll ask the kid tomorrow - He didn’t say - I’ve cleaned it up before so they brought it back to me suspecting a virus.
one of my PCs on Win 2k does not like the cold - it flash,s between a green screen (low res) and a blue screen (hi res) this throws up an thin orange lineon the start up scren - so before windows starts properly i have to give iy a whack - one time i hit it to hard and it must have set the graphica card to some stupid low resolution, the screen was just pixalated blocks, rather like your picture -
if it is a virus on the laptop it may alter the screen resolution to unreadable to stop you from downloading an antivirus program - i had a virus on one Win2K PC which stopped one antivirus program from loading, i found another app that did load and stopped the virus problem - if you download an antivirus app on another PC then burn it to a CD, put the CD in the laptop you may then be able to load in the app and do a virus scan - i used Avast and Avira (both free) Avast worked on Win2k where the other did not - you can use a USB memory stick instead of a CD but you have to make extra sure that the virus hasnt jumped to the stick before you remove it -
M.R.
Hey Poppa. If you can get it to start up in Safe Mode, it may be worth trying uninstalling the existing graphics driver, restart again in normal mode, not safe mode, and reinstall the latest version from the video manufacturers website. Usually either nvidia or ati.
nVidia Drivers
ATI Graphics Drivers
Hope this helps, Daz
I’d also use CCleaner and Malwarebytes Anti Malware, which are both free programs, as well well as a virus check on the system for good measure. Good luck!
Dells usually come with a bootable recovery CD. Pop that dude in and reboot to see if everything looks normal. Maybe even do a restore?
Does it flake out ONLY when trying to connect to any network or JUST the internet? Are you using a wired connection or Wi-Fi? If it only bombs when trying to connect via Wi-Fi, it could be the Wi-Fi card is bad or has been partially dis-lodged from its connector due to a fall or something.
D
Thanks guys - all logical places to start working on it. Gotta call the kid ‘cause when I worked on it last I installed MalWareBytes and Avast both, (and promised not to tell his parents he’d been slummin’ on some pretty hard-core sites.) It acts video card related to me also. I booted to safe mode last night but could not connect to a network in safe mode. I’m on it. I have my dell disks - it’s an inspiron too so I oughta get some utilization there.
in safe mode you cannot get outside the box and very little within it -
try opening internet expolrer oni its own. if it fouls up, try one of the other browsers, if it is IE you could downlod another version kill the original and lod in the new one -
M.R.
in safe mode you cannot get outside the box and very little within it -
try opening internet expolrer oni its own. if it fouls up, try one of the other browsers, if it is IE you could downlod another version kill the original and lod in the new one -
M.R.
first things first - in safe mode I can do a sys restore to what looks like a good date.
Hopefully then I can get malware etc. updated. It runs fine with no crashes in safe so I don’t think it’s a drop or video driver prob.
Well those kind of sites are where the viruses are.
But I’ve never seen one like that. I had a ATI card with
bad onboard memory that looked something like that.
Since the memory was soldered in - I had to trash it.
I got it runnin’. It was a virus. win32cryptor
Tell the kid to stay away from those err… “infectious” (in more ways than one) web sites!
Glad you got it going Poppa.
D
Well - just reinstalled malwarebytes and it found something else - won’t know for a bit when it finishes. AVG found the win32cryptor.
I told his dad that if this was reality the boy would have aids by now.
Nice fix PW. Worth at least 75 bucks.
So does Dell have a hidden ghost partition for restore or did
you use a restore disk for that computer?
It has the standard dell d:/ partition with restore points. It was hard to pick one but the problem started around thanksgiving or just before Christmas he said - so I found a good one the 12 of November 08. Reminds me of one of my dad’s favorite fiddle tunes when I was a kid - wow - odd flash of memory there.
Nice pickin by that Eric fella.
BIG HINT -
virus,s put themselves in Windows restore - although restore may be a good ides, if you have a virus it will reinstate itself when you use restore - best thing is to switch restore off -
TO BE SURE THAT ALL TRACES OF WHERE THE KID HAS BEEN USE - GOOGLE for EVIDENCE ELIMINATOR - this program actually works -
M.R.