I have a friend whose computer may have a virus. The computer has XP and will only boot up to a black screen ,sometimes a windows logo screen and that's it. I hope her files and family pics can be saved.... what can i do to fix this for her?

Hello Vger,

Can you boot it to safe mode?

You can get to safe mode by repeatedly hitting F8 during bootup until you get the boot options screen. When it comes up, choose safe mode and see what happens.

When it goes to a black screen, does it just sit at the black screen, or does it restart the computer and do it all over again?

Worst case scenario is you can't get safe mode to work. What you can do then is take the hard driver out, attach it to another computer, and try to get the important data off that way.

Let me know what you come up with and we will go from there.

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yep safe mode will not work,tried that. If i take this hard drive out will the virus spread in the other computer? Never had to do this before and yes on reboot it does the same thing over again.

Try inserting the hard disk on the other computer if you know how to...see if it boots up.

To play safe, you may wish to take out any other hard disks from that computer first.

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OK...what would be the best way to get rid of the virus if everything works out with the boot up ?

If you insert it into another computer and the hard disk appears to boot up with no problems...then it might not be a virus after all.

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Well it looks like there may be a virus,so is there anything i can run to get rid of this?

Hey Vger-- this thread got overlooked in the frenzy somehow -- if you still have the issue...

would you please follow the Prework link in my sig below-- and post the requested logs in the HJT Logs forum.

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My signature (below) has many usefull links, to help with viruses etc.

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Free Anti spyware

Free Anti virus

cool thanks..............