One hell of a virus problem

Hey guys,
I have one hell of a serious problem here with my computer. A few days ago (and every week) I did and do virus scans. Each and everytime it seems that there's no viruses or bugs. I'm using McAfee Virus Scanner.

All of a sudden this morning, I turn my computer on; everything runs as normal till it gets to the "Loading Windows XP" bit of boot-up, and all of a sudden resets itself. Of course it doesn't do it just once, it does that every single time in a loop. Startup, reset. Startup, reset.

In the past this has happened to me a lot of times. Previously when it happened, I would go into Safe Mode and do a system restore; which seems to work and remove whatever the problem is.

However this time, when I try to go into safe mode it resets right after attempting to go into safe mode! This is absolutely ridiculous! In other words, there's absolutely NOTHING I can do without it resulting in the computer reseting itself.

I don't know what's going on, or if it's even a virus; but it most likely is because it only resets when I try to load Windows.

Please, if you have ANY suggestions as to what to do; they will be greatly appreciated!

P.S: Buying a new computer or paying someone to fix it is out of the question. I don't have any money for it and my dad won't pay for it. My only solution is to hope someone here can help me.

Many thanks in advance!

Edit: In case you're wondering how I posted this, I'm on my sister's laptop.

Have you tried grabbing your OS installation/recovery CD and using the recovery console to see if any system files need to be fixed/restored?

As a matter of fact, I haven't tried that yet. Sadly, I'm quite illiterate when it comes to Hardware and Operating Systems.

Anyway, I'll let you know what happens. Thanks for the suggestion!
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//Edit: Okay, I tried it; but I'm quite confused how to get to the Recovery Console of the CD. Am I supposed to press some sort of key to execute the CD? I need a few more details.

You'll want to boot from the CD as if you were going to install Windows. After it loads a few drivers and such, you should reach a screen that looks like this:



Press 'R' to get to the recovery console.

Nope, no luck. It doesn't load it; it just boots up as if there was nothing in the CD drive. I'm absolutely stumped here.

I also just remembered, the other day the system popped up a message as I was loading saying something like "C:/WINDOWS/config/system is either corrupt or missing" or something like that. Can't remember it exactly. So I restarted my computer and it worked fine. Could be caused from a virus =/

everything runs as normal till it gets to the "Loading Windows XP" bit of boot-up, and all of a sudden resets itself.

over heating maybe?

Can't be overheating really. because it only ever resets when trying to get into Windows. Otherwise it would probably reset a few seconds after turning on.

Anyway, I turned my computer on and pressed DEL to get into SETUP/Q-Flash, and checked the PC Health. It says:

Current CPU Temperature: 66 degrees celcius
Current CPU FAN Speed: 4017 RPM
Current SYSTEM FAN Speed: 0 RPM.

That normal?

Well thanks to my friend I managed to boot from CD and get into Windows Setup. I then went into the recovery console - but it's like fullscreen Command Prompt. What do I need to type?

That will depend on a lot of things. Try looking through these results and also try searching for your specific problem.

On a side note, 66 degrees Celsius seems a bit warm for your CPU. Did you build the machine yourself or is it a factory computer? My Core 2 Duo runs at around 47 degrees, and I have the sucker overclocked. Might want to check your heatsink/fan at some point to make sure they're doing their job.

Well it was somewhere around 55ish, I think it just happened to go up to 66 when I noted it. Anyway, that would explain the crashing/overheating of my computer. I'll work on that later .

Well I tried some of those commands listed on the microsoft support website for the recovery console, but they're a little confusing. Some of them didn't quite do much.

Also, I didn't get some message asking for my login, at the Recovery Console.

At the command prompt in the recovery console type: chkdsk /r and hit enter. Let it do it's thing. Remove the disk and reboot when it's done (it may take over an hour to run so be patient)
. I'm 98% certain that will fix it.

Added note for future readers of this post



This is the problem most people have when troubleshooting their problems. They don't make detailed notes about what happens, or what they were doing or what they try to do to resolve it.

Programs and hardware these days are inherently designed to attempt to tell you that they have encountered a problem, and by default attempt to tell you what the problem is. Unless you pay attention to what "they" are trying to tell you, you will have a very difficult time fixing them.

Okay, I'll have a go at that later today and I'll let you guys know what happens.

Yeah sorry. Since it fixed after rebooting I didn't think much of it till now. I'll make a mental note to write down any errors next time.

Interestingly enough, everytime I try it keeps crashing. Not resetting; crashing.

It doesn't seem to let me get past 50% while executing "chkdsk /r". Every single time it keeps resetting when it reaches 50% completition.

Apparently all this unexpected restarting isn't good for the computer HD =/

Yeah, you likely have a bad drive.

Is the computer under warranty?