what to do next?

Trying to help a friend whose 80 yr old Dad (not computer literate) has the
following problem. My friend is computer literate, but lives a long way
from his Dad. Here's the symptom and problem:

}}} My father has AVG anti-virus on his computer. He said he has a red wall
come up on his screen when he boots up and has a hard time getting out of
it. Is this a normal AVG screen and what do you do to get it off your
screen? Use ESC ? {{{

Sounds to me like the A/V is telling him he has a virus. If that's the case
what's the next step?

RB wrote:
> Trying to help a friend whose 80 yr old Dad (not computer literate) has the
> following problem. My friend is computer literate, but lives a long way
> from his Dad. Here's the symptom and problem:
>
> }}} My father has AVG anti-virus on his computer. He said he has a red wall
> come up on his screen when he boots up and has a hard time getting out of
> it. Is this a normal AVG screen and what do you do to get it off your
> screen? Use ESC ? {{{
>
> Sounds to me like the A/V is telling him he has a virus. If that's the case
> what's the next step?

As I haven't used AVG much I wouldn't be able to guess, but short of
getting a more detailed description you could see if his Dad could use the
"Print Scrn" key and Paint to email him a copy of what the "red wall" says
exactly, then act on that.

aD

On Wednesday, "RB" wrote:

> Sounds to me like the A/V is telling him he has a virus.

I've seen this kind of screen at boot-up using AVG - it's normally
telling you that you have a Trojan or Worm and asking if you want
to allow access to a particular file or some such. Never seen on
mine but have on other peoples!

Generally the user ought to say "no access" but most clueless day
to day users say "allow access" I think - at least those that I
know do!

--
Bryan Anderson <usenet@bryananderson.co.uk>

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 08:01:10 -0600, "RB" <rbig@bellsouth.nospam.net>
wrote:

>Trying to help a friend whose 80 yr old Dad (not computer literate) has the
>following problem. My friend is computer literate, but lives a long way
>from his Dad. Here's the symptom and problem:
>
>}}} My father has AVG anti-virus on his computer. He said he has a red wall
>come up on his screen when he boots up and has a hard time getting out of
>it. Is this a normal AVG screen and what do you do to get it off your
>screen? Use ESC ? {{{
>
>Sounds to me like the A/V is telling him he has a virus. If that's the case
>what's the next step?

Hi RB,
I use AVG and the 'norm' is for a blue screen to appear with rapid
scanning of system files etc. and usually and hopefully a 'No Viruses
Found' message before continuing to boot up. I have not had the red
screen but as you suggest this does not sound good. Do you know
exactly how your friend gets beyond the red wall? AVG provides the
ability to create rescue disks on floppies which can be run at boot
up; if the PC can be got this far perhaps these disks can be made and
an attempt to clear the problem treated that way.
Reg