Author Topic: Blank screen after boot scan on reboot  (Read 3424 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

ucemessages

  • Guest
Blank screen after boot scan on reboot
« on: June 12, 2009, 11:11:17 PM »
Hi,

I'm posting this message so that others can solve this problem if they have it. This solution worked for me with Windows XP Professional SP2. If it works for you under other operating systems, please reply to this message.

I installed avast home version 4.8.1335 on a computer that was infected with VBS:Malware-gen / Win32:Rootkit-gen [Rtk] (it's a worm that replicates itself via usb flash-drives and creates a new autorun.inf and a system.exe file in the flashdrive in order to infect other machines through Windows' autorun "feature").

After installing avast, it offered to do a full scan when the computer was rebooted and I agreed to that.

Full scan went ahead upon rebooting and after logging into windows, I got a blank screen. No icons on the desktop, no start bar, nothing.

This is on Windows XP SP2.

The advice I found on this forum involved restarting the computer in safe mode, removing avast, and rebooting.

While I tried that option, it didn't work. What did work, was the following: which you should attempt BEFORE removing avast.

Please note that even though there's nothing on your screen, your computer is fully functional.

- Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del.

- Click on the button to start Task Manager. (Alternatively, you might be able to do the same with ctrl-shift-esc.)

- Click on the Applications tab (top left of task manager).

- Click on New task button (lower right).

- Type: regedit

- Click OK (the registry editor will open).

- If you are not familiar with the registry editor get someone who is, or save a copy of your registry (instructions below) before proceeding - YOU CAN REALLY SCREW UP YOUR COMPUTER WITH REGEDIT. BE CAREFUL!

- Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows NT/Current Version/Image File Execution Options/explorer.exe (notice that the entry says "Windows NT", not just "Windows"! If you don't understand this, click on the plus sign to the left of my computer (if there's nothing under it), then the + to the left of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to expand that branch, then expand the "Software" branch in the same way, and so on, until you got to the "Explorer.exe" branch and it's highlighted.

- Look at the right panel. If there is an entry whose name is "Debugger", click on it to highlight it, and press the <F2> key to rename it. Change its name to xDebugger and press <Enter>.

- Close regedit.

- Back in Task Manager, look for the Shutdown menu and select "Restart", or you might have a button for this. If you don't see any of this, hit ctrl-alt-delete again and select shutdown and then restart.

If the above doesn't work, restart the computer in safe mode, remove avast, reboot the computer normally, and try the above steps again.

- -  -
How to back up the registry:
In Regedit:
- Click File.
- Click export.
- Type: c:\regbak
- Press <Enter> or click the save button.

This will save your registry in a file in the root folder of your c: drive called regbak.reg.

Good luck I know how frustrating this is!!!!!

Alex

Offline Lisandro

  • Avast team
  • Certainly Bot
  • *
  • Posts: 67195
Re: Blank screen after boot scan on reboot
« Reply #1 on: June 13, 2009, 02:46:51 PM »
Thanks for sharing.
Welcome to avast forums ;)
The best things in life are free.