Is this Virus or Hardware problem?

[keress2]

I've been troubled by a difficult problem most of the year. It started on almost a completely different system than what I have now. All that's the same is the monitor and the mouse. The system would freeze, the monitor would go black, with the led flashing like it was getting no signal, nothing but the fan would be running. This increased in frequency till I was unable to boot at all. I was advised my motherboard was failing. The system was aging, so I decided to get a new system. Within a month of bringing my data onto the new system, the problem recurred. I decided it must be a virus so I got very serious about routing it out. Eventually I bought a new hard drive. I wish I could be positive that I did not have the old hard drive even hooked up, I can't believe I could have been that stupid, but my memory is soft enough that I don't remember specifically, but within the first day the new hard drive was installed with win xp, it did the shut off. At the time I was convinced it had to be a bizarre coincidence, could not be software. Someone advised flashing the bios,claiming it was an incompatibility between SP2 and older bios's. Within a few weeks the system was shutting iself off again, within greater frequency as time went by. I've found a work around. If, as I boot up, I pause while the system is first checking the IDE, and leave it paused there for at least an hour, I will be able to use my system all day. Otherwise, it won't run more then fiften minutes without failing. It's as if there's a timer running that I'm able to bypass.
I've checked with Trend Micro. They swear I've checked my system for a virus every way known to man, and that it's impossible for a virus to cause damage to any hardware, or add data to a bios.

Anybody have a clue what I'm up against?

 

[kmcferrin]

You said it was an almost completely different PC than the problem started on, but then you indicated that you only changed the hard disk. What else has changed? It could still be a hardware problem. It could be the system board, or it could even be the power supply. It's really hard to say without more information.

 

[BadFrog]

Is there any info in the event logs relative to your problem?

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy"
Albert Einstein

 

[keress2]

No, sorry to be vague. After it was theorized the motherboard failed, I swapped out most of the system, eventually replacing everything except the monitor, the mouse and the phone modem.

 

[beergoggles12]

A friend of mine recently had a virus which was a mare to remove. The symptons were similar to what you have identifed, suddenly the screen would black out and everything would freeze. You would then boot up and it would be OK for a couple of minutes then the same thing would repeat.

Their operating system was ME, the virus had populated the recover section of ME. They were using Norton which was not discovering any virus.
We ran AVG on it, which spotted two trojans and a virus (forget the name - if i remember it was a WIN32 kala) disabled the auto recovery to ensure re-infection and 30 minute later, system working like a dream again.

Hope this helps

 

[jimp56]

very interesting post, beergoggles12. I would very much like to hear if this is what questor517 is encountering, because my first thoughts would possibly have been overheating or a power supply issue - EXCEPT for the mention of "I've found a work around. If, as I boot up, I pause while the system is first checking the IDE, and leave it paused there for at least an hour, I will be able to use my system all day. Otherwise, it won't run more then fiften minutes without failing." -- which throws a monkey wrench into the works.

questor517: please try AVG as mentioned above and or ewido to see if you encounter any malware. thanks.

 

[keress2]

I'm waiting for AVG to download as speak. Earlier I ran my Trend Micro and it found nothing.

In the meantime, I swapped in my son's monitor and the system's been functioning normally for the past three hours, after a normal boot up. I'm very encouraged.

 

[keress2]

I spoke too soon. The system froze up in the usual manner twice while I was trying to run the virus scan. I used my work around, letting the machine sit paused for an hour before the memory check and am running the virus checker again. It's been through most of C drive and has found nothing.

At one point in the past I was crashing during virus scans. I'd never be notified of anything found in the scans, but the system would go for a long time without crashing afterward. I wondered if the scan wasn't in fact finding a virus and damaging it at the point of the crash.

 

[keress2]

The AVG found only two instances of the Istbar virus, spyware that takes over the browser and brings in pornographic sites. I still haven't found anything to account for the system crashes

 

[mainegeek]

questor517,

Try it with the modem removed.