XP will not boot - Virus?

Hi all,

I have an Acer laptop that was working fine up till yesterday then I got the blue screen of death and now it will not boot. Shamefully I must admit I haven't updated my virus protection in some time and was installing a codec for media player classic before this occured.

The Acer insignia comes up as it starts then there is nothing after that but a blank screen, although I do get beeps when I hit the keys. I cannot even run a Windows XP recovery or reformat the HD. When I set the bios to boot to CD first. The same blank screen shows up.

I installed the HD into another known working Toshiba laptop and the same problem occured, the Toshiba insignia comes up then...nothing. So I don't think it's a hardware issue. I then took the drive out and put it into a 2.5'' USB HD enclosure and I was still able to see and transfer all my info from the drive so the data is still there, it just won't boot. Could this be some kind of boot virus?

Thanks in advance for all help offered.

C

 

Welcome to MG.

The fact that the PC won't boot from CD tends to suggest a hardware failure to me. My first point of call would be the RAM. If you have more than one RAM module remove all bar one then try a reboot and if it still fails swap the module that remains for another. If you only have one RAM chip then you may need to obtain another chip to try.

If that fails to solve the problem the power suplly would be next on my list of things to check.

 

It could be that your hard drive has taken a major :crap . If the same thing happens on 2 PC's with the HD installed, then that's probably the problem. Even though the 2nd PC was a different brand (Acer vs. Toshiba) you still should at least get a Windows boot screen with a logo before it crashes to a blue screen(and it WILL crash on the Toshiba). I'd recommend booting to a diagnostic for the hard drive, but since you already mentioned that you can't even boot to the CD, that's moot. You could try getting an adapter so you can plug the HD into a USB port on a healthy PC, and either recover any data or run the diagnostic that way.... These adapters are only about $20 or $30....
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
I've used this one many times; it works freekin' beautifully!