Mary Hanna wrote:
>
> Friend got hit by the Avast bug, so in the end his computer would only boot
> some times , then crash after a few minutes, these are his words and I never
> confirmed it, it would not boot for me.
>
> I found that it would boot into Safe Mode OK..
>
> But in the end even that stopped working.
>
>
> The Bios Boot screens are showing a lot fixed damaged words, Reloaded the
> Default Bios settings that did not fix a thing..
>
> Even when booting from a Floppy into Dos you get damage words, but they are
> all static they do not change
>
> Found that the Fan on the 3D card had frozen, fixed the fan but still the
> same problems.
>
> Any help as I have never come across these problems like this before
>
>
> Thanks
You could be dealing with more than one problem at the same
time. You say
"Found that the Fan on the 3D card had frozen"
and that could lead to damage to the video (3D) card.
First, you need to carefully distinguish, where the "fixed damaged" words
are coming from. The BIOS does some tests, and has its own kind of
error messages. Then the OS eventually starts to boot, and the OS
is more likely to be trying to "fix" something. You should copy
the error messages *exactly* and post them here, to give more
context to your problem description.
If I was dealing with your computer, I would simplify the hardware
setup, and use various test programs, to prove that the core of the
computer is functioning well. Then I would add back (reconnect) the
things I removed, and see if the symptoms change.
For example, if the hard drive was made by Seagate, I would download
the Seatools for DOS test software, and prepare a test floppy with that.
Then, run the diagnostic and see if the hard drive is OK. If the
hard drive is connected to the same cable as the CDROM drive, I
might disconnect the CDROM drive during the first test. If the
test passes, I might shut down the computer, shut off the power, and
reconnect the CDROM. Then run the hard drive test again. The reason
for comparing the two cases, is to see if the CDROM is negatively
affecting the IDE bus.
There were instructions for dealing with the Avast problem, in the
newsgroups in the last few days. But it sound like you have more
problems than just that software issue from Avast. Maybe some
hardware is not healthy.
*******
http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=51647.msg436938
"Among the files affected were high-profile programs produced by
Adobe, Realtek sound card drivers, various media players etc."
This is their article on how to clean up the mess.
http://support.avast.com/index.php?_...barticleid=376
*******
Paul