Is this a virus? Can't boot or restore; totally stuck.

Hi:

I've owned my 532h for 16 mos and loved it - until now. With no warning, yesterday am it started turning off and eventually would not boot at all. Went to Acer chat, where they told me to remove the battery and hold ALT and tap F10 to access the restore function. It proceeded successfully. Deleted McAfee, added avast, deleted MS Office, added Open Office, then shut down the machine. All seemed well. But this am, while I was on the internet, a photo of a red-and-black-faced "Kiss"-type rocker dude - with a very menacing expression, I have to say - appeared on the screen, and the unit then started to turn itself off again. For the second time, I was able to run restore completely, and I then powered the unit off. No modifications were made after that second restore. Now the unit will do absolutely nothing. Acer has no help to offer other than to say I should purchase restore discs for $20. I will also need to purchase an external drive, since I don't have one.

I loved my Acer, but I have no idea what to do now.

Is this a virus? If so, what can I do now in this situation? Or does it seem to indicate a different problem?

I am totally baffled, and I have limited tech ability . . . .

Geeks on Call wants more $$$$ to look at it than it would cost to replace.

Can anyone help?

 

When you installed the new anti-virus program did you actually run a scan? If not do so. In addition, you might have picked up a malware infection. Go to this site and download this free program:
http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-A ... 04572.html
Install, check first for updates and run it. If your computer won't let you install Malwarebytes, you definitely have a malware infection. To install it then, You need to start you computer in Safe Mode. Also, type msconfig in your search box assuming you have Windows 7 (run) in XP and open the Startup tab. Uncheck every program file and reboot first. Once installed do the full scan and see what pops up.
Good luck

 

Hi:

Thanks so much for your reply and advice. But right now, the AAO will do absolutely nothing. Sometimes, it tries to start the restore process, but then fails and goes to a black screen. Other times, it doesn't even do that. So I don't think I can do anything until I receive the recovery discs from Acer; am I right? Is there something else I can do?

But I will DEFINITELY follow your suggestions if I can get the AAO back after running the recovery discs.

 

Can you get into the BIOS? If so, is the had drive detected? If you can't get into the BIOS, you might need to flash it. The process to do that is mentioned in several threads in this forum group.
If you can get in the BIOS and the hard drive isn't detected, it might being going bad.

 

Hi:

When I press F2 and go to the "information" tab, there are notations for both the CPU and HDD; those notations include the HDD model name and serial number. So I don't think the hard drive is going bad.

But today, I have been unable to get the unit to do anything more than attempt to start in Safe Mode; however, after it runs through a few files, it bombs and says that a file is missing or corrupt. It then directs me to install the Windows installation disc - which I don't have.

So I don't think I can really do anything now, can I, other than wait for the recovery discs?

I really appreciate your help; if there is something more that I can do, please let me know.

 

I suspect you will have to reinstall Windows from the recovery disk as you advise you can't get into system restore from a f command at boot up. Do you know anyone that has a Windows disk? If so, you could do a recovery repair that way.

 

Hi again:

Thanks so much for your help. I have ordered the recovery discs from Acer and am now trying to figure out which external drive to buy. Based on responses to another post in this forum, I understand that I must use an external drive with an AC power supply. I am hoping that you or someone else can tell me if the following drive will work for me to run the recovery discs:

LG Super-Multi External DVD Rewriter with SecurDisc and LightScribe GE24LU20

Here is the link describing the drive on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/LG-Super-Multi-Se ... PCV0293IBE

And here is the link describing the drive on the LG website:

http://www.lg.com/us/computer-products/ ... 24LU20.jsp

When I called LG support, I received very conflicting information. First, I was told that the drive is "plug and play" and that the AAO would recognize it immediately to run the recovery discs. Then I was told that, without drivers installed (which I obviously cannot do in this situation), the AAO would NOT recognize the drive.

Can someone please tell me if this drive will work for this purpose and in this situation?

THANK YOU.

. The support staff from LG

 

If it's AC powered it'll work. Plug and play means that windows will recognise and use the drive, however you will more than likely need to install drivers IF you want to use the lightscribe feature.

Having said that, the recovery process starts in a "native" mode, where the BIOS recognises and uses the drive, long before Windows will even see it. So no, you won't need to install any drivers or anything to get it operational.

 

Thank you SO much for this information and explanation. I have entered unfamiliar territory with this situation, so I am very grateful for the information and support from this board.

I will proceed to order this drive from Amazon. The recovery discs are scheduled to arrive on 12/31. Hopefully, everything will work successfully and I will be able to leave a post about that for New Year's. If not, I may again be leaving posts with questions about what to do.

I am still surprised and confused that this occurred with avast! software on the AAO. That's assuming that this is the result of a virus or malware. I had thought that avast! was a highly rated product and would prevent such problems. I am now wondering if I should purchase eSet or another paid antivirus product. I will be doing some research on that this week.

Thank you again. Happy Holidays!

 

If you were looking to avoid the purchase of an external DVD player, you could use a desktop computer to copy & paste the recovery disc to a USB stick . Would need either a 4 gig or 8 gig usb thumb drive depending on the size of the recovery disc. You might have to go into BIOS first and change the boot order to first seek a usb device to load first.