Boot screen Garbage

[Mary Hanna]

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

 

[Paul]

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?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=376

*******

Paul

 

[philo]

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

If the fan on the video card had died...
even if you've now replaced it...good chance the card is defective.

Not too likely a virus would have damaged the bios...
so I'd put in a new video card and try it

 

[Mary Hanna]

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?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=376

*******

Paul

The computer has now stopped loading XP but I can load into DOS but that
also is showing Damaged Words.


A lot of the Bios boot dater shows damaged words and also in the Bios setup
screens..

So this excluded the hard drive, so we are left with 3D card, PSU and Monitor.

Like some words in the bios are showing like that CDRNM instead of CDROM,
but not all of them, the Word errors are consistant..

About 40% of the words are damaged in most screens

 

[Bob I]

The computer has now stopped loading XP but I can load into DOS but that
also is showing Damaged Words.


A lot of the Bios boot dater shows damaged words and also in the Bios setup
screens..

So this excluded the hard drive, so we are left with 3D card, PSU and Monitor.

Like some words in the bios are showing like that CDRNM instead of CDROM,
but not all of them, the Word errors are consistant..

About 40% of the words are damaged in most screens

The video adapter has been damaged, replace it.

 

[philo]

The video adapter has been damaged, replace it.

I already told her that hours ago
be she chose to ignore the advice and go chase phantoms

 

[Mary Hanna]

The video adapter has been damaged, replace it.

A local shop gave us a ATI a9550ge-td card but the Bios did not see it, it
looks like its compatible with the MoBo but have had similar problems with
another Gigabyte card that was using a ATI card but would not display with a
Nvidia card , we tried a reset but that did not help. But will try a Reset to
see if that works, Bother MoBos were that same model but one was the Pro
version, but that was some years back.


We returned that card back to the seller, but he came back that a customer
that brought it fixed it with a Reset..??

 

[Mary Hanna]

I already told her that hours ago
be she chose to ignore the advice and go chase phantoms

We tried that with a ATI a9550ge-td card but it did not work at all.

May be a bios reset ( Remove Cmos Battery) will try later.

MoBo is setup for a Nvidia Card GeForce3


Not that easy to get a AGP card around here..

 

[Paul]

We tried that with a ATI a9550ge-td card but it did not work at all.

May be a bios reset ( Remove Cmos Battery) will try later.

MoBo is setup for a Nvidia Card GeForce3


Not that easy to get a AGP card around here..

The a9550ge seems to have a few issues. But I can't remember now,
what the details of the compatibility issues are.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...d=9&model=A9550+Series&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

All you can do at this point, is try another card.

This site provides basic compatibility information, but does not
note all the combinations that have problems.

http://www.playtool.com/pages/agpcompat/agp.html

Paul