Avast 5 boot scan problem

[danjams]

I've had a problem on another computer (which is a Compaq Presario CQ 50 Notebook (laptop), 15.2 inch lcd monitor, w/ 2 G RAM, 160 G HD, running Vista home premium, 14 months old) while I was trying to run a boot scan. The screen got broken & wouldn't show anything at all, so I had it hooked up to an external monitor which doesn't show any information until after the os loads. I scheduled a boot scan, clicked to restart the laptop. The scan does its thing before the os loads. I don't know what happened because the external monitor never displayed any info whatsoever, but the pc never started back up and now I don't know how to get it going again.    :'(         :'(

Please, if anyone has any help, I sure could use it, as this laptop is a dinosaur & cannot function very well at all.........   

[DavidR]

The Esc key should abort the scan.

The problem is if a detection is maid it will be waiting for a user input on what action to take about the detection.

Now if your external monitor won't display until the boot is complete, a possibility as any graphics driver may not be loaded, so you won't see that action required screen.

Since the boot-time scan effectively doesn't complete, I don't know if you would have any record of what it had found if anything. Check for the existence of this file, C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\report\aswBoot.txt, this is for XP, you will have to find the Vista location of this.

Why is it that you are running a boot-time scan ?

[danjams]

The Esc key should abort the scan.

The problem is if a detection is maid it will be waiting for a user input on what action to take about the detection.

Now if your external monitor won't display until the boot is complete, a possibility as any graphics driver may not be loaded, so you won't see that action required screen.

Since the boot-time scan effectively doesn't complete, I don't know if you would have any record of what it had found if anything. Check for the existence of this file, C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Alwil Software\Avast5\report\aswBoot.txt, this is for XP, you will have to find the Vista location of this.

Why is it that you are running a boot-time scan ?

Thanks very much for your reply and your time. It didn't start back up after 4 or 5 hours so I tried to shut it down by ctrl+alt+delete several times to no avail. I then tried all the f keys to no avail. Then finally manually hard stopped it by holding down the power button till it shut off. Now, the power button will still turn it on as the lights come on & I can hear it running, but the os never loads, & I can still never get any info, words, or any screen to come up on  the external monitor (an old crt monitor that does work with other pc's), so I am still stuck at zero. I've tried several times to start it up, once leaving it on for more than 2 days, all to no avail.

Of course, I have no way of knowing what happened, but I don't think there was any detection found. I had recently gotten the pc back from the factory (HP) who replaced the hard drive under warranty & reinstalling Avast was the first thing I did to protect it from viruses.

And I can't check any file as it won't boot up now, unless there is a way to do it without the os being loaded. I was doing the boot scan just because it hadn't been done on the new hard drive yet and wanted that done as a reference point and as personal comfort that there was absolutely nothing on here.

Again, thank you. If you or anyone has any further suggestions, all will be greatly appreciated.

[DavidR]

I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to suggest, given that you have just had the hard disk replaced under warranty, I wonder if this isn't related if you can't boot into windows either.

Now presumably when HP replaced the HDD, did they restore it to factory settings, e.g. was there any pre-installed software, particularly any other security software ?

Are you able to boot into safe mode, normally achieved by pecking away at the F8 key during boot, that however be different in HP systems.

You could try using a Linux live CD, that enables you to run Linux from CD, you may or may not be able to check if the hard disk is even detected.

Other than that I don't really know what else to suggest.