blue screen of death, virus, can't detect hard drive on startup?

Question

I've just been given someones old laptop computer.  I ran a spyware program on it (an outdated version which was already installed) and it found something like 30 worms. The antivirus was out of date so I uninstalled and tried to download an up to date one from download.com but it wouldn't work (I tried two: antivir and avg).  Also, I tried to download the latest versions of explorer and firefox, but nothing happened -- it wouldn't download.  A few minutes later and I got the blue screen of death.  Now when I try to start up the computer it says there's no hard drive (I just did a disk cleanup before all this so it was fine before).  Sounds like a virus right?  Anything I can do to fix?  It's a fairly old laptop (a Dell), but it is running XP (home edition).  One more thing: the usb port won't recognize my external hard drive (someone suggested the bios needs to be updated, but the computer crashed before I could do that).  Help!

James S · Accepted Answer

Its probably a virus but try to start it up in safe mode on the start up (f2 or something on the start up) If that doesn't work either its a virus or your hard drive pooped out. Meaning you need to go buy a new hard drive.

deperte · Answer

No, it really is not neccesarily a plague, even although some viruses may reason it. The Blue show of lack of life is what's called a "kernal panic," in truth it really is at the same time as an mistakes takes position it really is so undesirable that homestead windows purely has to assert "screw it" and forestall even attempting to operate. there are quite some different blunders that could want to reason this to take position, and also there are quite some plausible fixes. it actually relies upon on the source of the mistakes. convinced, reformatting purely about always works (until eventually there's a hardware situation), yet there may nicely be different, a lot less time ingesting fixes available to you. i'd recommend you submit yet another question showing the precise mistakes message that the BSOD says, then we may be able to grant you with extra certain suggestion.

Anonymous · Answer

Could be a problem with device drivers, hardware or software. This problem can be solved by uninstalling new softwares, updating device drivers and making minor configuration changes . From http://fixit.in/bluescreenofdeath.html . You can also run a free registry scan using utilities from http://re7.info/

Nic C · Answer

i am sorry to say this but it is a virus i had the same computer i went through 3 hard drives

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blue screen of death, virus, can't detect hard drive on startup?

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