Tom Posted July 13, 2009 Posted July 13, 2009 Hi all! I know I haven't posted for an age, but I couldn't think of anywhere else that might be able to help. I think I have managed to kill my laptop... When I turn it on and starts as normal, the vista chime plays and then instead of seeing my desktop I have a black screen and my mouse. I can't do anything except move my mouse. Eventually I get a blue screen and it turns off. I can start in safe mode. I still get the black screen, but I am able to open task manager and from that I am able to run firefox, by opening it as a new task. I can't open any folders or browse my drive. Through firefox I have been able to browse a few files by using Gmail and browsing for attachments. I have been able to open a couple of files. I think I may well have acquired some form of malware, as google searches get redirected to random sites, and any search for spybot search and destroy or similar gets redirected. I have the setup for spybot on my desktop from a previous download, and have tried to install but that has failed part way through installation - possibly because I can only view my desktop through gmail 'add attachments'! I have tried to repair or reinstall windows by pressing F11 at startup (it's a Packard Bell laptop, and I have used F11 to do this before) but pressing F11 does nothing. I'm out of ideas, and have an essay due by 23:59 on wednesday. I don't think work would be too pleased if I wrote it there! If anyone has any idea what I could do please please let me know!
The fish Posted July 14, 2009 Posted July 14, 2009 (edited) I know how to browse your hard drive, if that helps: Through Task Manager, try opening notepad (the run command is, unsurprisingly, "notepad"). Do File --> Save or File --> Open, and browse away. Open another copy of notepad, and do the same thing, and you can move stuff around, even onto portable drives/memory sticks. As for the issue in general, I'll think about it tomorrow - it's 3:40 am at the mo, and I'm not thinking straight. I suggest, for now, downloading Prevx CSI and seeing if it'll run. If it will, it should help you on the spy/malware front. To find it, try other search engines, or, just to confuse the re-director, broomcamera.com. Edited July 14, 2009 by The fish
Tom Posted July 14, 2009 Author Posted July 14, 2009 Good news, I have managed to sort it out. I remebered that I had left the smart restore files on an external drive, and I was able to run them through gmail. A full re-format wasn't my preferred option, but since I did one a few weeks ago all my data was backed up so no harm done.
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