I was surfing the net today and all of a sudden I got a white screen. Then I could hear in the background, Avast - a threat has been detected. I could not get away from the white screen other than Ctril-Alt-Del to reboot.
I tried Safe Mode, but either 2 things happen:
It will boot into safe mode but after I enter my username and password it starts to load then the systems says Restarting now. So it will not go into safe mode.
Will skip safe mode and will attempt to load normally.
Once it loads I get the white screen and again I hear Avast, a threat has been detected.
I did try selecting use last good Start, and when it it came said it was in Step 1 of 3 then stopped.
I am running Windows Home Vista. I do not think I still have a install/disks etc I got from Dell.
@blakenz
As you are not a qualified removal expert, as far as we know, you should refrain from removal advice here.
A qualified remover has been informed…
Insert the USB into the sick computer and start the computer. First ensuring that the system is set to boot from USB
Note: If you are not sure how to do that follow the instructions Here
When you reboot you will see this. Click repair my computer
notepad and press Enter.
The notepad opens. Under File menu select Open.
Select “Computer” and find your flash drive letter and close the notepad.
In the command window type e:\frst.exe and press Enter Note: Replace letter e with the drive letter of your flash drive.
The tool will start to run.
When the tool opens click Yes to disclaimer.
Essexboy is an expert in removal of malware. Follow his instructions. He is located in the UK, and there could be some delay in answering your questions because of the time difference.
Sorry, I don’t have/use Avast, but I wanted to post it here because this is ‘where I was’ when I found a solution that worked.
This post is a little long but I believe in providing as much info as I can in the hope it helps someone else out.
Always remember, if your webcam activates without your prompting, put your best face forward and strategically place your middle finger where they can see it!
I was suffering from the WSOD (White Screen of Death) with the ‘webcam’ option (webcam activated) on my Vista-64 bit machine and was searching for help and came across a few ideas but the one suggestion to boot up in safe mode with the command prompt (posted by Blakenz – Thanks!!!) worked for me. Here is what I did.
First of all, I am not sure how this happened, it either came through on an Adobe update (CS6 –As the Geek Squad guy suggested) or was part of the Cloud.5 that Norton 360 discovered and quarantined. Anyway, about 5 minutes after the update my screen went white and the webcam was activated.
If your screen is white (here is what I did):
Press Ctrl-Alt-Delete and that should return you to a screen where you can switch users, log off, etc. Either log off or use the shutdown option (lower right part of screen).
Power up your computer and press F8 until you have the boot options displayed (Safe Mode or Start Windows normally), using the arrow keys select Safe Mode with Command Prompt and press enter. This did not work for me at first, so keep repeating the first two steps until you get the Command Prompt window to appear. It may take a few minutes.
In the command window type, explorer.exe and press enter. This should allow your computer to boot up with very minimal services (No Internet), but boot up nonetheless and with no WSOD.
Now, I have both Norton 360 Premiere and also the free version of Malwarebytes installed on my computer. This may have saved me, hopefully you have some type of malware removal tool already installed. If not, maybe you can put Malwarebytes on a USB stick and maybe your computer (even in a minimalist working condition) can still download the software application.
Once my computer booted up in the minimal state, I ran the quick scan on my free version of Malwarebytes. It found two Trojans (probably one Trojan in two locations), that partial log is below:
Registry Values Detected: 1
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon|shell (Trojan.Agent.RNS) → Data: explorer.exe,C:\Users\Joe\AppData\Roaming\skype.dat → Quarantined and deleted successfully.
Registry Data Items Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)
Folders Detected: 0
(No malicious items detected)
Files Detected: 1
C:\Users\Joe\AppData\Roaming\skype.dat (Trojan.Agent) → Quarantined and deleted successfully.
Malwarebytes needs to shutdown your computer to successfully and fully remove these Trojans so that’s what I did and then my computer restarted with a successful boot up and no WSOD!!!
I then ran a Full Scan with Norton and then another quick scan with Malwarebytes followed by a few shutdowns and restarts (by me) and then another Full Scan (all drives!) using Malwarebytes.
This seemed to have worked for me as I am posting this on the once infected computer. Again, I think what saved me was having a malware removal tool already installed before I encountered the dreaded WSOD.
It saved me about $300 from the Geek Squad ($200 yearly service fee and $85 data backup), and NO, the problem is not a video card as some have suggested.
Good Luck!