Is this a virus?

gene_tunney

Out of the blue my laptop just went off 2 days ago, except it wasn't completely off: The screen was all dark except for at the bottom where you could just make out "Microsoft Corporation" in white, faded writing. It was unresponsive in this state so I plugged it out, and let the battery go. It ran out if battery after a while, then I turned it back on.

When it was loading up it said something along the lines of "cannot restart...fix problem?" I clicked yes, then it tried to restore my laptop to an earlier stage but I dont think I ever backed it up (stupid, I know) so I clicked cancel, then it tried something else, then it asked me to restart. When I restarted It loaded up fine, I logged in, then it went all black again as I described in step 1. The cycle then repeats all over again.

Also, this may be of note. The first time this happened, windows security came up saying it had detected a virus, the word "trojan was definitely mentioned, so I "fixed it", then it said I had to restart to complete the process, so i clicked on it, but it wouldn't restart. I think it just went off then suddenly as described above and that as the first time.

Any idea what this is, and is it fixable? Quite pissed off as the laptop is not even a year old.

Black Swan

Do you have a current AV programme installed? Have you tried booting your laptop pressing F8 many times as it boots until a screen comes up where you can select run in safe mode? Then try running your AV in safe mode. Or if you don't have an AV installed, then try system recovery while in safe mode. If you have an MS operating system, it will automatically backup when you install updates, and you can recover from there.

gene_tunney

Blue_Lagoon wrote: »

Do you have a current AV programme installed? Have you tried booting your laptop pressing F8 many times as it boots until a screen comes up where you can select run in safe mode? Then try running your AV in safe mode. Or if you don't have an AV installed, then try system recovery while in safe mode. If you have an MS operating system, it will automatically backup when you install updates, and you can recover from there.

I had AVG free, but for some reason it wouldn't let me run firefox in my college accom, so I deleted it and used somnething else called f-secure (supported by the college).

I'll try all that now, and report back, cheers for the help!

gene_tunney

I let the battery run out and rebooted. Upon rebooting, the computer tried a system repair, which failed, so i just started the computer normally. When I installed some antivirus (avg) and tried to run it, the computer shut down. Everytime I tried to run malaware it said "error code 714 (0,9).

Even if I dont run antivirus it shuts down after a while. A few times, when it let me run avg, infections were detected and I got a message asking me did I want to "force removal" and if I clicked yes I would run the risk of "system crash". I havent gotten this message since as it hasnt been letting me run avg.

Also, when I run it in safe mode, avg doesnt work, well it scans but no removal options. I did a system restore to 4 days ago, but it hasn't helped, even though I think this was one day before the first shutdown.

any ideas?

bhickey

To be honest, it sounds like re-installing might be the best option if you're able to get a copy of whatever data you need and you have the installation disks.

gene_tunney

bhickey wrote: »

To be honest, it sounds like re-installing might be the best option if you're able to get a copy of whatever data you need and you have the installation disks.

Would I lose everything?

bhickey

gene_tunney wrote: »

Would I lose everything?

Absolutely yes.

However, the idea would be that you try and make a backup copyfirst of everything that you don't want to lose. If you have (or can borrow) an external disk drive or a USB flash drive then you can probably boot the computer on a Live CD (e.g. Ubuntu) and copy all your data off.