I just bought a new HP Pavilion DV6601AX with Windows Vista, but did not get a standard antivirus with it. A few days ago my friend installed an antivirus program on it for me, and it worked fine. However, yesterday, I tried to boot it, and the window screen did show up (as completely BLACK for a while) and then the taskbar came up, but the cursor never stopped being busy. It just showed up as a ‘busy circle’. I gave it some time, but it kept going for half an hour! I really need to work on a word document, but I can’t even click on anything. I restarted it, and the same thing kept happening. I even tried putting the battery in again in case it wasn’t installed right, but nothing changed. What am I supposed to do?
I am also more comfortable with Windows XP and I was planning to get that installed… but I am really scared because I just got a new laptop. HELP ME PLEASE!!! I live all alone in an apartment and I’m not that great with computers.
Desperate Computer Help Needed Please!!?
November 13th, 2009
Tags: Computer, Desperate, Help, Needed, Please
Posted in HP Laptop
2 Comments »
Restart your computer. As it boots up, press the F8 key repeatedly and the computer will start in Safe Mode. You will again be able to see your desktop. Now type restore in the Search box and press the enter key. This will launch System Restore and you will be able to go back to the way your computer was before the antivirus was installed. Pick the day before the change was made and follow the prompts. Your computer will restart and be all better. But it will be missing the antivirus your friend installed. You will have to get an antivirus. But didn’t your new PC at least come with some trial version antivirus? You should consider installing Linux on your PC as a dual boot option. That way if Windows crashes, you can still use your PC since Linux doesn’t get viruses. This would be a better option than purchasing and installing XP. SuSE linux is pretty sophisticated, can be free and easily installs alongside Vista.
It’s possible the antivirus program is interfering with the boot process. It’s also possible that it’s just running its initial scan and taking a very long time to do it. 30 minutes of inactivity is a bit unreasonable though.
Your best option may be to use Vista’s ability to restore to a previous save point. This would revert you to an earlier version of Vista that was saved before recent programs/drivers had been loaded (specifically, we want it before the antivirus program was installed).
Here’s how you do that:
First, you boot to Safe Mode: Boot up the PC, and before the windows logos show up, start tapping the F8 key. Keep tapping it until you get a menu of selections for boot methods (it shouldn’t take more than 10 or 15 seconds for this menu to appear). Select Safe Mode from the menu. Vista will boot into Safe Mode, which may look pretty ugly but it should be functional.
When Safe Mode has finished booting, go to the Search box and type in the word Restore. You should see the System Restore program at the top of the returned search results. Launch the System Restore program.
System Restore will give you an option to restore to the last known good save point, but you can also select to Choose a Different Save Point, which will give you options for saves that were previous to that one. Select whichever Save Point seems most appropriate (whichever was saved just previous to the antivirus installation), then click Next. Confirm your selection and the PC will reboot and restore to that savepoint.
I hope that gets you working!