Cannot boot up

[John Hawkins]

Wiz,

My old PC will not boot up ! Guess there is a virus in the XP OS. Is there anything I can do to clean it up ?
?
I opened it ( Dell) up in safe mode went back three weeks but it is still not booting up .

I am not a PC person in the know so if it needs someone in a repair shop I will look for that person locally.

The PC is about 7 years old so I wounder if repairs are worth the $$? Would love to save some documents as well but cannot trust myself to saving the data and transfering the virus over into a clean PC .

Thanks for any help you can offer.

[Jack Stoner]

Because it will not boot up, does not mean there is a virus.

Since it boots to Safe Mode OK, what indication do you get when you try to boot normally?

By the way what model Dell do you have? I do a lot of support on the Dell community users helping users forum.

[John Hawkins]

Jack,

Thanks for the reply .
The Pc is a Dell Deminsion 3000.
All It does is trys and boot but but never completes. Not sure how to explain it in plain pc talk . it just started acting crazy all of a sudden and even in safe mode it still was not fully booting .
Sorry About the non pc language here .
I appreciate your help as always .

[Chris Dorch]

It's probably a bad driver that isn't loaded in safe mode...

Let me guess... It stops at either a blank screen or just stays on then Windows XP screen forever?

[John Hawkins]

Chris,
Thanks for your info. As it turned out -- you were probably right . I took the pc back to May first and it fixed whatever problem was there . It is booting up just like always now .

I think there might have been a problem with Avast anti virus program that caused the problem. I tried taking it out via add and remove program to reinstall it and I cannot get it removed . A box keeps poping up that says there is a
"fatal error and setup cannot continue" . It ( Avast) is not working so I went ahead and put AVG 2012 free version in so I will have protection.
Any suggestions as to how to get Avast completely out ? Google says many others are having the same problem removing it. Would appreciate suggestions from you and/or others .

[Chris Dorch]

There is a very dangerous tool out there call MSICleanup... This will completely remove applications from your machine. If you want a copy, I can provide. It was free from M$ but I believe they no longer have it available for download.

[John Hawkins]

Chris,

Many thanks but I hesitate to get into something that might hand me more trouble than I have . I am not that " apt" on the pc so I had better pass on your kind offer.

I have disabled Avast and the AVG seems to be working ok so maybe I should just leave things as is ? Would you agree?

[Wiz Feinberg]

Chris,

Many thanks but I hesitate to get into something that might hand me more trouble than I have . I am not that " apt" on the pc so I had better pass on your kind offer.

I have disabled Avast and the AVG seems to be working ok so maybe I should just leave things as is ? Would you agree?

PM me if you want some coaching on removing the failed Avast installation.

[John Hawkins]

Wiz,
would appreciate your coaching regarding removing Avast from my pc. as per your prior message .
Do you think it is really necessaery to completely remove it ?
Thanks for your offer !

[Wiz Feinberg]

Wiz,
would appreciate your coaching regarding removing Avast from my pc. as per your prior message .
Do you think it is really necessaery to completely remove it ?
Thanks for your offer !

If your PC becomes unstable, yes, Otherwise, a Reg cleaner will remove references after you physically delete its folders, wherever they reside. My procedure when an uninstall fails is to delete all folders created during the installation. Then delete all temporary files using CCleaner. Then, run the Registry Cleaner found in CCleaner to remove orphaned entries related to that program.

[John Hawkins]

Wiz,

Thanks a lot ! I do have ccleaner and will follow your format . Pc seems very stable at this time .

Sure appreciate all you do for us forum folks !

[Chris Dorch]

Glad you have paddles again... If you are happy, I am happy...