nothing at startup

[johnrochie]

hi all,

having a major issue with a sony vaio laptop running vista home premium.
it recently picked up the Antivirus 09 malware, which i tried removing using Malwarebytes. Unfortunately this didn't remove the whole thing so i had to go back at it and try and remove the rest of the files. i booted in safe mode to run another full system scan, during which the machine froze. i restarted it a couple of times and the same thing kept happening. The last time i tried it i just got a blank screen with a flashing line, similar to the one seen at the command prompt, with the difference being nothing can be typed. This happens immediately after the Vaio logo displays after powering up, and before the windows loading screen.

I've left it to see if anything happens but after 20 mins its still hanging. I've booted with the Vista Recovery disc and there was no problem doing this, i tried a start up repair but it says it can find no problems, I've ran chkdsk /r which found and repaired some problems but still no change, and I've used system restore to see would that make a difference but still I'm stuck with this blank screen.

Any idea's what could be the problem?

This may be the wrong forum, if it is my apology's

 

[Lorien]

What files did you remove and from where? Full filenames and exact file paths would be useful if you can recall. How did you know what to delete (if from website removal instructions, please provide a link to that site)? I suspect that you may still be infected with that or something else or you deleted the wrong files (or the infection moved and/or deleted the real files and replaced them) and and the system can't function correctly with what was removed - but I'm not certain by any means as there is no proof of either assumption at this point. Since we can't test for malware in its current condition, I'd like to test the system files if we can do that.

First though, how far back did you try System Restore - to before you became infected or only to when you removed the files? Go back to the infection date if that's possible and not too long ago (don't go back more than 3 or 4 weeks if you even have a restore point that far back). Did the prior restore actually work (say it completed) or did it fail in some way?

If that doesn't work or can't be done, go to Start / All Programs / Accessories / Command prompt and right click on command prompt and click run as Administrator (you can skip this step if using the disk and just click on command prompt).

If using the disk, cd to C:\Windows\System32. Type sfc /scannow and enter and let it run. It will scan and try to fix some of your system files. Hopefully it will complete with no corruption it could not repair (if there is such corruption post back here or try to analyze it to find the problem file(s) using http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928228. Try to attach the report - it will be sfcreport.txt if you follow the instructions to parse the CBS.LOG (you may need to copy it to a flash drive to transfer to the machine you're using to post) so we can see how bad the corruption or damage is and if it can be repaired with good copies from the installation disk (unless there are too many).

Do you have a genuine Vista Installation Disk (or can you borrow one of the same bit-size - version doesn't matter - from ANYONE)?

I hope this helps.

Good luck!