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

The flash is a BIOS update provided by HP. It seems to have a GUI called
"winphlash" that brings up a screen with buttons to either flash or exit. I
never had issues running this flasher when XP worked properly in the past.
I was able to extract out the files that are used in this .exe program, but
even runing from the DOS batch file, I get the same error about it not
having permission and that it can't find the SYS file (that's in the same
folder as the batch file, as I can see it). Would putting these files on a
floppy allow me to flash from DOS?

I don't know where I would find a DOS flasher for my BIOS. My laptop does
not have a floppy drive but a CD-ROM drive. Would that suffice or would a
USB floppy drive work?

T.C.


"Mark L. Ferguson" <marfer_mvp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23t2VdrEWIHA.4532@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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.







.