Appears to be a Virus but No Virus Found?

[Guest]

I have a Dell Laptop that I purchased a few months ago and within the last week I have been having problems with Windows XP Professional, freezing if the screen saver turns on or I am starting up the computer. The system will stall in the blue Windows splash screen, sometimes it would be a blank blue screen or it would say "windows is starting" and do nothing, other times I would get to the log in page and I was unable to log into the computer.

I was able to get Windows to open one time after running a an express diagnostics during initial computer start up (one time boot, f-12 key) and the only other time was after an extended diagnostics was performed in which all test passed. When I was finally able to get into Windows I attempted to run a virus scan (McFee) and defrag the hard drive, but when I awoke to hopefully find something meaningful had happened the computer was frozen in the background wallpapaper picture and nothing else. The only way to start over is by turning the computer off and on, off and on, over and over again. I am unsure what to try next, the virus scan never completed (as far as I know?) and I have checked for any updates for Windows XP but I am current. Very time consuming and frustrating, any assistance would be appreciated

Thank Yo

 

[roger]

Hi Tuna Helper,

If your computer comes with an XP CD, you can try booting from the CD,
typing R and going to the recovery console.

When you're there, type
chkdsk /r
this will look for and fix harddrive errors
type chkdsk /? to see all the options.
It may take a while.

Description of the Windows XP Recovery Console
http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=kb;en-us;Q314058

If your computer doesn't come with the XP CD try to boot from with the
'command prompt' option and type chkdsk /r

Good luck