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Virus Issues Means Laptop No Longer Boots

babybell

Likes # 0

Posted November 25, 2012 at 9:51AM

A friend of mine has handed me is Toshiba laptop which he cannot get to start up. He says he was having real issues with lots of viruses, but now it won't even boot up.

I have taken a look and tried starting the laptop. Most of the time it displays the Toshiba logo and then the screen just goes black.

I have tried starting in Safe Mode, but I get the same issue.

I am able to get to the boot menu, and there is an option to boot from an external device, but as yet I haven't tried this option.

On one option, I do get a message saying that a SMART Failure has been detected and that I should backup the pc as a hard-drive failure maybe imminent, but this then results in a quick flash of a blue screen before the usual black screen appears.

As he said it was riddled with viruses, is there anyway I can get a scan done from an external device, or does this laptop sound like its had its days?

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rdave13

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Posted November 25, 2012 at 10:58AM

First question is ,have the "return to factory settings DVDs" been burnt?

Second one is , is there a backup of docs, photos etc?

It sounds as the hdd is bad. Try booting up from the recovery discs and if it still wont boot and restore then I would replace the drive.

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johndrew

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Posted November 25, 2012 at 11:00AM

If it is virus related try downloading and running the AVG Rescue CD. It is free and a good start for cleaning up an infected system.

It could also be the HDD that is failing given the message.

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