Re: Need Help - Computer Only Operatres (limited too!) in Safe Mode

Recovery Console might let you flash, but admin permissions might keep you
out there too. If you can't flash it out, you will probably need BIOS
hardware replacement. With a laptop, that might be costly. I would try a
bootable dos floppy, and a flasher that runs in dos.

--
Mark L. Ferguson
e-mail subject line must include "QZ" or it's deleted
..
"T.C." <tendercrisp21@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:pYjjj.3970$jJ5.2737@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hello everyone. I've got one huge mess of a computer issue compounding my
life right now.

Here goes:

Friday evening: Came back from dinner. I had my laptop on connected
wirelessly to the internet here at home. Had firefox open with a few
sites I didn't want to close and wanted to continue to browse when I got
back home. Computer and pointer froze so I held the power button down
until it shutoff. Powered back on. Get back into XP, go browsing agin,
then computer locks up again. Power off. Power on. This time, the COMPAQ
logo that usually covers up the POST screen is gone and instead, I get the
POST screen miniturized and repeated 8 times in a horizontal row in the
middle of the screen. Get the XP logo, everything seems fine, then
computer screen goes dark as it transitions into login screen. Screen
goes from black to a marbled black and white. Completely unreadable.
Power off. Power on. Same octuple mini POST screen, followed by the 30
second option screen that is now misspelled! Wandows shows up intead of
windows and system is now sqstee and other crazy character substitutions.
Needless to say, nothing I've done alleviated this issue so far.

However I can boot into safe mode and the screen is readable. Using
safemode with networking lets me get on to the internet if I'm plugged
into the LAN on the router. I have symantec corporate edition anti-virus
(school provided AV), run it at full scan, no results for anything
malicious. Run windows defender. Nothing. Run CHKDSK from command line.
Nothing bad reported. Everything looks ok, but I can't use XP normally.
I used HP chat support. They had me remove the HD, and swap the RAM
modules. Didn't fix anything. They told me to get help from an HP
support center. I go to best buy. Guy at counter inserts his USB flash
drive and runs some diagnostic software. After it finishes it says it
finds a trojan, but the guy clears the screen before I can see the name of
it. Starts accusing me that I got this from using torrents since their
software shows a list of any P2P type software like azureus and limewire.
Anyway, he says I'll need to reformat and flash the BIOS (seems to imply
that XP and the BIOS are corrupted). Unfortunately my recovery disks are
back at school (I'm on winter break).

This time, I tried using panda security's online scanner. It only found
cookies as threats and that damn viewpoint viewer program that always
installs at the opening of an internet window. No trojan. No virus. I
don't know what the hell is going on. So i download a trial version of
NOD32 (kid with the geek squad says norton doesn't cut it, use nod32)
however it's an .msi file and when I doubleclick to install I get the
follwing error:

"The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation"

I logged in to safe mode under the administrator account. What gives?
Anyway, I start looking through the administrative tools section under the
control panel and use another computer here to research this error message
and work arounds and enable this and disabling that. Nothing would give
me the proper "policies" to run this installation. I even tried this
CTRL+ALT+DEL x2 thing at the login screen for safemode. Didn't work
either. I also downloaded the BIOS update from the HP support website to
see if I could just flash the BIOS and hoped that restored some semblance
of order. Then I get this error message:

"Cannot Load Driver 'lists driver file location'. Please check your
accounts. If you have no adminstrator privelege, please login again! The
system cannot find the file specified. Error code: 2"

It seems I'm stuck at the moment. I have no idea if formatting and
reinstalling XP will let me flash the BIOS later or if there is a work
around or what.

If anyone knows a way to give me unilateral control over my laptop, I'd
appreciate this or knows another way I could flash my BIOS I'd appreciate
the help.

Thanks!

T.C.





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