freeze at scan- no way out

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

Please help! Trying to help family…installed Avast home version, scheduled scan at reboot. Scan froze after about an hour and several viruses found. Went to forums and decided to shut down (ESC didn’t work). Message screen says something like “Sorry Windows didnt shut down properly…choose mode…”
Tried safe mode, last best config, normal start up, etc. No matter which I selected, Windows started to open then screen clicked, went black, then back to original message screen. Shut down, repeat…

So, can’t get into BIOS, or Windows to do anything.

Its an emachine T2042, 2GHz Intel Celeron, 40GB HD, 128 MB DDR w/XP, not sure of the other specs since I can’t get in and the owners don’t know. No XP or other install disks around either.

Any suggestions would be appreciated

2

Well… this would be a problem. Can’t you get your XP CD? If so, you can boot from it and overinstall XP, without losing your archives, data, documents and so on. Then, try to get clean as you seem to have deleted necessary files to boot.

3

Thanks Tech,

I only have the XP disk that came with my own laptop, I can use it on 2 PCs (same address) cant I? I’ve never heard of an “overinstall”, but I’ll check it out. Thanks again,

~d

4

I don’t think so. XP licensing is one per machine. But, of course, I’m not here to defend Microsoft rights…

Update installation is another way to call the procedure of installing Windows ‘over’ an existing installation of Windows of the same version.

5

Suggestions?
(After trying the above and hopefully having success,)
Give the poor wee thing a bit more RAM. 128 ain’t enough.