Trojan virus, now no screen? Help!

[earthmover]

Spyware detected a Trojan virus last night at home, kids turned on Mcafee virus scan as instructed. Scan went on for a good half an hour, last looked had 15 items found and 12 quarantined. The PC then switched itself off, restarted, but now has a blank screen.
Re-booting gets the "Vaio" logo, followed by the "Windows XP" logo (as normal), but then reverts to a black screen. The cursor is visible, and moves in response to the mouse, but that is all. There is a recovery disc, but advises that this will wipe any data (assuming that there is any left anyway)
Advise please?
Mark

 

[Fanum]

Reboot, then keep pressing f8 as it reboots (before the XP screen)

This should take you into 'safe' mode.....hopefully you'll see what looks like a basic, stripped down normal xp desktop.

Run your virus checker again from there......then reboot to see if it's worked.

If it hasn't, repeat and do a system restore to a date before this trojan came along.

To access the System Restore Wizard, click Start, and then click Help and Support. Click Performance and Maintenance, click Using System Restore to undo changes, and then click Run the System Restore Wizard.
While the computer is in safe mode, System Restore does not create any restore points. Therefore, you cannot undo a restoration that you performed when the computer was in safe mode.
You can use System Restore to restore your computer to any restore point while in safe mode. If you cannot start the computer in standard mode, you can use System Restore to restore to a time when you could start the computer without errors.
To restore to a time when your computer started without errors, select a restore point as close to the time you remember it last started without errors.

This all assumes you can boot into safe mode of course.

Come back if you can't

 

[Aidan1150]

Can you boot the computer into "Safe Mode"? Usually F2 or F8 will get you there depending on your machine.

If you can get that far then run your McAfee again and hopefully it will be able to finish the removal.


Edit

I think Bill is a member.

 

[Fanum]

PS If you do a system restore, you will lose all files and data created inbetween now and the point you restore it too, obviously

 

[earthmover]

Ta for that, will print it out and try this evening.
Mark

 

[cookie]

PS If you do a system restore, you will lose all files and data created inbetween now and the point you restore it too, obviously

it's been a while (can't think why ), but i don't think that's right. only the system files are changed IIRC.

 

[Fanum]

it's been a while (can't think why ), but i don't think that's right. only the system files are changed IIRC.

On second thoughts you may well be right Cookie

It will bugger up any progs that have been installed in that time though 'cos it restores the registry.

 

[Dickieboy]

If you do get the machine to boot up in safe mode it is very unlikely that a system restore will remove a trojan infection.

Bite the bullet and do a clean recovery on a formatted drive, you'll most probabaly have to eventually anyway.

 

[ovenpaa]

It could be an FP (False Positive detection) If you do get back to your desktop in safe mode then see what was quarantined and where it came from, if you are not sure post the names/locations of the files and I can check for you.

Other thing is if you do get to the desktop backup your documents, pictures etc to a CD in case you need them.

At this point make a mental note to turn off the autorun function if you do rebuild the machine it would be a shame to reinfect with a malicious Autorun.inf when you go to copy files back. Don't for get to back up your favourites as well!

 

[earthmover]

Tried the suggestions, but still can't get anything other than the blank screen.
I can get to the Bios page, I've tried re-booting from both the options offered, but neither makes any difference to the outcome.
Have to give this laptop back now, so will look again tomorrow.
Ta
Mark

 

[Riktus]

Basically youre screwed - I had a trojan a few months back - got the experts at work to take a look they tried everything for 2 days to clear it but it just reinfected the drive every time. (I am sure it depends on the trojan doing the infecting....)
They eventually backed up my files and then replaced the Hard Drive - up to now the system has been OK.

Rik

 

[Dickieboy]

Format, reboot, you know it makes sense

 

[DaveGSCymro]

Dare I say.........































Get a Mac

 

[PaulXC]

Dare I say.........



Get a Mac

+1 on that!

Our kids were forever b*ggering up our home PC's - now we have a couple of Imac's s/hand off Ebay. Set the kids up with their own account and password and what ever they do they can't screw up our account on the same machine. At the moment Mac's just don't attract the same amount of virus writers but I guess that will change as Apple's market share is increasing.