PC said it was blocking URL stuff and I should schedule a boot scan. I just loaded free avast night before last hoping it would keep my PC safe. Now after a boot scan it won’t even boot into safe mode. I have a black screen with a strang symbol in the upper left corner with the cursor flashing by it and that is as far as it gets. This is a Gateway XP Desktop PC that is now out of warranty and I don’t have a OS disk. Now what !!! My daughter uses this for her schooling and I cannot afford another PC. I’m not computer savay so bear with me and talk in a computer language I can understand.
Gateway systems normally have a recovery partition that you can use to get the system back to factory defaults.
Have a look at their website, the instructions are in their support section.
If your system doesn’t have a recovery partition, get a windows XP cd (preferably one with sp3 integrated) and use that to do a repair.
NOTE: a repair will NOT delete your data.
How to do it can be found HERE