My 85 year old father isn't sure what happened, but his computer isn't working any longer. I am guessing he fell onto some site, or received some e-mail that has infected his computer with something, but damn if I can figure it out. There's always the option to bring it to someone like Geek Squad, but I'd really like to save him the possible $200 bill for that...I'd be very grateful if some of you wise folks might be able to offer some recommendations that might fix things for us.
Some facts -
Lenovo B575 64-bit laptop
Windows 7 Home Premium w/Service Pack 1
Symptoms - Regular boot up results in a desktop without icons on the desktop. The bottom tool bar is there and shows some icons and the Start button, but when I move the mouse down to that bar all I get is a circle rotating. I'm an unable to ctrl-alt-delete nor can I ctrl-shift-esc. The only way to shut the laptop down is to hold down the power button.
I can reboot the laptop in Safe Mode after that. And, in trying to fix things, I've run the following, all in Safe Mode:
- Tried to run a System Restore - no earlier versions found
- Malwarebytes - full scan found nothing
- Ran tdsskiller - no threats found
- Ran McAfee's Stinger's 64 bit anti virus tool - found no infected files
- Have tried to run Avast antivirus, but get an error when trying to launch the setup - "The installer is unable to initialize early avast! self-defense with error 0x0000043c! Aborting!"
I'm not sure what to try and run next...it's got me so confused. Despite finding no infected files, when I go to re-boot, I'm back at the icon-less desktop and the scrolling round icon...
Any thoughts?
Some facts -
Lenovo B575 64-bit laptop
Windows 7 Home Premium w/Service Pack 1
Symptoms - Regular boot up results in a desktop without icons on the desktop. The bottom tool bar is there and shows some icons and the Start button, but when I move the mouse down to that bar all I get is a circle rotating. I'm an unable to ctrl-alt-delete nor can I ctrl-shift-esc. The only way to shut the laptop down is to hold down the power button.
I can reboot the laptop in Safe Mode after that. And, in trying to fix things, I've run the following, all in Safe Mode:
- Tried to run a System Restore - no earlier versions found
- Malwarebytes - full scan found nothing
- Ran tdsskiller - no threats found
- Ran McAfee's Stinger's 64 bit anti virus tool - found no infected files
- Have tried to run Avast antivirus, but get an error when trying to launch the setup - "The installer is unable to initialize early avast! self-defense with error 0x0000043c! Aborting!"
I'm not sure what to try and run next...it's got me so confused. Despite finding no infected files, when I go to re-boot, I'm back at the icon-less desktop and the scrolling round icon...
Any thoughts?