[Resolved] Laptop won't fully start up at all after trying to remo

Hi, I've got a Dell Inspiron 1200 running Window's XP. About half an hour ago I was using the internet when I got all sorts of virus warnings from AVG saying a trojan had been downloaded however it had trouble removing it and shortly after that I started getting the usual strange pop ups and little yellow balloons in the bottom right hand corner of the screen which indicated that I definately had a virus. I therefore shut my laptop down and restarted it with the intention of putting it in safe mode however when I did it just came up with a few lines of text on the screen and didn't do anything else so I tried again with the same result. I then just tried starting it normally only to find that my laptop now starts up with the dell logo showing then just before the windows xp logo would show the screen just goes blank and stays that way (it's definately on just completely blank) with not even the cursor showing. No matter what startup option I choose it just goes to this blank screen although I can still hit F2, F12 and F8 to get into the setup screens etc but not actually start the laptop. Is there anything I can do??? Kind Regards S

It could be that either an important legitimate system file had been infected or replaced and then targeted by your AV or the same thing could have happened with a registry entry. I'm guessing that it's associated with a file called userinit.exe as this is the usual culprit.

This can resolved if you are lucky, or you may be able to fire up the Dell Factory Restore option, but this will wipe the hard drive and you will lose all your data so that may not be an option for you, depending no your back-up policy.

Your best best is to start a fresh thread in this part of the site where there are better able to walk you through the processes that are required. It would be helpful if you could locate any discs that came with the computer as they may be necessary depending on the situation.

Cheers, i've now posted the topic on that link you gave me. I wouldn't mind wiping everything and starting from scratch as long as I could put the Hard Disk into an enclosure and copy all my files off of it before doing so.

Since this issue appears to be resolved … this Topic has been closed. Glad we could be of assistance. If you're the topic starter, and need this topic reopened, please contact a staff member with the address of the thread. Everyone else please begin a New Topic.