Sister's Laptop wont boot...

[goobernoodles]

Ok... my sister has a Gateway 200ARC laptop.

Trust me, I'd never buy gateway... ugh.

Regardless. The stupid thing won't boot. Safe mode won't work. I've never worked on laptops, so maybe theres something different I can try... The screen goes black, with just the cursor, which i can move, where there should be the xp logon screen.

 

[quackerww]

Im guessing virus... And or spyware.. It is freezing it at start up...
Just a thought.

Your sister very tech savy? If not it could be just that...
Music downloader?

 

[goobernoodles]

Thats kind of what I'm assuming it is. After all... she DID buy a gateway.

 

[goobernoodles]

My other sister's gateway just died a few weeks ago.

I think they are starting to catch on.

 

[goobernoodles]

Regardless... what should I do..? Anything besides reformat?

 

[quackerww]

Thats what I would do.... Thats just me tho..

 

[amdskip]

I don't think its the gateway thing, don't diss them because the users don't know what they are doing. That said, I would hook the hard drive up to a different computer and manually remove as much spyware as you can and then attempt booting it up in the laptop.

But if safe mode won't work, I would backup if needed and then format, reinstall, update, and install anti virus/spyware protection to keep this from happening again. Teach her how to use firefox and just delete the IE icon so she has no excuse.