I really need some tech help please!!

[sunnygirl1412]

I'm typing this on the laptop, because I've been unable to log onto my home pc all day. I get as far as the Welcome screen, click on a user and enter the password, then get the start-up chime (and sometimes the desktop screen) and then I'm logged out straight away.

I've tried all three users on the machine - in the hopes that if I could get onto one user, I'd be able to run the anti-virus and see if that's the problem, but no joy. The computer was fine when I switched it off last night - we'd run the antivirus during the evening, and found no threats/viruses; and it had been behaving itself for me when I was using it.

We have had a number of viruses recently - that arrived on the machine at around the same time as I joined Mumsnet and started using an online games site - King.com - but thought we had solved all the problems.

So - can anyone suggest what I can do to fix this problem - I can get to the Setup menu, but have no idea what to do once there. And does anyone know of any viruses out there at the moment that will do this to a pc?

Many thanks in advance
sunnygirl.

My brother had this on a windows 2000 PC but we didn't have the discs so couldn't do much. Your options are based around the rescue disc and it depends what you have as to how that goes. I've never done it but understand it gives you a number of options from restoring a previous profile to completely starting again.

Can you boot into safe mode? This could be an option to at least get into the machine and attempt to run anti virus.

If you can't get into the machine DO NOT rush to restore everything as you could well lose all of your data (particularly things like emachines do this) Download knoppix and run it instead of windows on your machine. This will allow you to move all your important data to the laptop before you do a restore.

We tried to boot it in safe mode, so we could run the anti virus, but no joy. Luckily my husband backs up all our data regularly onto an external hard drive, so everything up to about a week ago is ok.

He's done a bit of a search on the net, and apparently this problem seems to be to do with something called Blazefind - which is an adware programme, but one that has been corrupted so that when your anti virus scanner removes it, it leaves files in the registry that cause damage.

We're not sure where it came from - but I'm going to be very careful where I go on the web after this.

Dh is doing a complete wipe and restore on the computer - to see if we can start it up clean.

Many thanks for the help and advice, lurking dad.