siraqt

Yes I do have the Dell recovery disc. Before this happened, a friend noticed the computer was running "sluggish" so he d/led malwarebyte at www.downloads.com. He wanted to scan the system. When he rebooted this happen. I'm not yet ready to reinstall/reformat. Recovery will be great, but if I must I will reinstall.

As just said, we can't support people using illegal tools. Ponch, I'm new to this PC world and someone recommended this - i didn't know it was illegal until now. be nice if people didn't assume - thx for letting me know it's illegal. i do appreciate these valuable information. Can anyone help me with the "pc boot up to black screen with blinking cursor" - thx

thx for replying Tripredacus - when I disconnect everything the screen just tells me to replug the keyboard and mouse back in. i'll reboot and back to my problem. I can't enter safe mode but i can enter bios. with the external drive with hiren i can enter safe mode.

PC info : Ms windows xp professional sp3 - Intel core2 duo cpu e7200 @ 2.53ghz, 2.0 gb ram, intel g33/g31 express chipset family (dell desktop) nothing is working - it'll boot up at the dell screen then goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor (which I can't type anything) I connected an usb external cd/dvd driver and ran "hiren boot cd" ran just fine - I was able to scan for viruses, check the system - everything is okay. when i disconnect the external drive - back to the problem. can anyone help me??? thank you.