Is this software problem or hardware?

about 2 months back I got the blue screen with something to do with WUP on it... I did a search on my other computer and was not satisfied with the results... there were SO many different answers. I came back to this one and tried different start options till it started and I got the enter Ctrl I screen to enter configuration but it wouldn't let me enter that... I had the option of F1 to continue and F2 to enter setup...set up shows the same as it did so I did the continue and things were doing fine until about 3 weeks ago when good old Norton's Internet Security let me down... I downloaded some Codecs from what I thought was a good site... I scanned it with Norton's and was assured all was cool...opened it and POW 8 malware attacks one right after another and Norton's couldn't stop it...took me all night and two days to get my system clean and had to reinstall the Norton's on top of it... then a week later my system slowed to a crawl and all programs run showed no problems... but I was feeling uncomfortable about Norton's... it was acting strange again... despite having a 100 days left on my sub...I junked it and put on AVAST and PC tools firewall... Avast found a virus on boot of scan..after full install and updates...it found 2 more and deleted it... I have run AdAware... CCleaner...SpyBot S&D... Asquared and things got better...then i downloaded and installed Tune Up Utilities 2007 and liked it so much I bought it... system is getting faster the more I take off and tweak...now how can I get rid of the boot problem?..is it software or hardware...I still have to F1 to continue on a fresh boot... I have attached a HJ this log
This is a less then year old system... Dell XPS 400 with XP Media OS...high speed connection through wireless...1 Gb Ram... 160 HD...Intel Pentium D CPU 2.80 GHz..confused

 

This message is normally a BIOS error message, nothing whatsoever to do with your operating system or lack of one. It will occur with no os at all and the screen colour depends on the make of the pc and BIOS.

The error is telling you that when the BIOS first boots it compares the list of data held in its CMOS memory with what it reads around it and finds something different. This process is called POST. The data is about things like the bios date, the number and type of hard drives, cd drives peripheral cards attached.......

The bios decides the difference is not enough to prevent booting, but enough to alert you. Thus is says F1 to accept the difference and continue anyway or F2 to enter setup (the bios) and reset whatever parameter has changed. There are such things as bios viruses but you would not get these from the net as the bios has to be flashed (rewritten) specially for them to be entered and this require physical access to the pc.

So go into your setup, find whatever has changed and reset it.
A more brute force and ignorance approach would be to note current bios settings, then reset the bios to factory defaults by shifting the motherboard jumper (power off) for 30 seconds or removing the motherboard battery for 5 minutes. Then you would have to reset all the wanted bios settings to proper values.

Hope this helps

Studio T

 

I went into the bios and changed everything back to default (two settings) now it has an error on boot up of floppy drive failure , the default in the bios is internal but there isn't one at all. I have a USB that I use when I do have need of a floppy drive..and it says no matter what the setting it will recognize the floppy drive if USB. NOW I can get into the configuration but I am not familiar with that so I did not change anything. But it took forever for my welcome screen to appear and then again a long time for the desk top to appear and all my icons to appear and the start up items to load. will it do that EVERY time I boot?..or is this just the system checking things out this first time following the changes? oh and I still get the F1 and F2 option

 

I am assuming that since it is a Dell and previously working that it was properly built in the first place. Further that you have not disturbed any hardware including cabling.

You need to separate out the symptoms in your own mind. Those due to the operating system (windows) could be from three effects
1) malware action - you have not yet fully cleaned house
2) corrupt sytem files/drivers
3) hardware problem.

I think 1 is the most likely, given your reported history. A quick look at your hijack log yields several suspicious candidates, eg wuauclt.exe can hide spyware of the same name. The msconfig proceedure described in

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=118690

can go along way to sorting case 1 and 2 problems. For malware you really nedd to return to that forum.

If there was a hardware fault such as a failing ( slowing) hard drive you might see the F1/F2 sequence and slow Windows start and operation, but your drive is only a year old? A failed modem, network card or onboard version of either would also cause this.

However I think the BIOS message is not linked to the system problems.
When a pc is first switched on as I said before the bios checks around for stuff that is connected. At this stage it does not even know it has an operating system - that comes later. It counts chickens and compares with its master list. The F1/F2 is merely a report that the master list is wrong. Somewhere in your system is a slightly disturbed card/connection/component which is not reporting to the bios correctly. Or you have the wrong date/time.
I agree the Dell Bios is the most limited and you have to go through the settings VERY carefully to get them right, even a bit of experimentation can help here. You must have changed something to have the floppy reference, I think some perseverence is called for.

If there is a dodgy component, perhaps its something you don't use. You might get a clue from any warnings in Windows device manager, in another thread a geek's USB problem turned out to be a dodgy modem problem in disguise.


Studio T

 

took me a bit to do it all...but I ran scans (those that would work in the particular mode I was in) in Normal startup, safe , and with restore disabled... there is nothing to attach...the only thing found were a few cookies..and those I do not worry about. I do not have the floppy drive error now because I set it to USB..but cannot access Config again and still have F1 and F2 option...none of what has occured happened until I got that WUP error and things would not work.. I saw in the safe mode startup that there was a WUP.sys file..should I look to replacing this one? scanned each instance of wuauclt.exe (3 of them) with Avast and Asquared and they were clean..one in is the c:/i386 and the other two were in c:/windows /prefetch and system 32