indiegirl Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 I've put this here as it's about my own PC rather than a school's one... The Father-in-Law sent me his PC across from Bristol last weekend, complaining that it booted OK, but "the screen goes black and I don't get any icons". As I'd just moved house, I left it for a week, turned it on this weekend - all booted fine. The only thing I noticed was that running an AVG scan returned an error reading the MBR. Other than that, I cleaned it up (physically and OS-ly) and it's running fine. Last night, I booted my own PC up - it went through POST, displayed the XP (Pro!) splash screen on loading, and then when it went to load the desktop - my monitor went into standby (so that's the black screen then) and would not come out. Tried a diff monitor - the same. Managed to remote-desktop onto it from my laptop - ran an AVG scan - MBR errors. Before I go on - the FiL's computer has not been connected to my home network at any time. I haven't used any USB keys between the two. In fact, the nearest his computer has been to mine is about 1ft in the spare room! Now, is this a nasty MBR virus I'm seeing - but why the hell would it stop the desktop from displaying? I'm racking my brains over this one... The only common denominators are: Both machines have a *cough* version of XP on them (the same one) Both machines have AVG Anti Virus (or did, I've since removed it and put Avast on for now) Uncommon: My machine has an nVidia separate graphics card, the FiL's is onboard graphics. The motherboards are different manufacturers... Any ideas???
StewartKnight Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Firstly, you can ignore a MBR virus, simply because I've yet to see an airborne computer virus. We've all read about rootkits (and sony), and I'd wondered why no-one had come up with a MBR rootkit. Have you and your Dad been to the same website?
wesleyw Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Did you run the MBR fix utility included on the XP CD? Wes
wesleyw Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 @ Stewart : How about wireless lol thats airborne? Sorry couldn't resist! Wes
Sirbendy Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 OK. No monitor signals, but Remote desktop is ok? Naff all to do with your disk or OS then. Nvidia though-try booting in VGA mode, not safe mode-just normal with VGA mode. I had this with Nvidia's detonator 33.xx series. It goes out of range and the monitor shuts down as a safety measure. Check your refresh rates when you get in..go for a basic 800x600x16@72hz, and see what happens. Try it with the other machine as well. My bet is video system error, probably driver related.
Geoff Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 We've all read about rootkits (and sony), and I'd wondered why no-one had come up with a MBR rootkit. Have you and your Dad been to the same website? Screw your MBR. Your BIOS is a much more interesting target. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/11372?ref=rss
indiegirl Posted January 31, 2006 Author Posted January 31, 2006 Strange thing I found though was that I've made no changes to the machine, and was running it happily all day Sunday. Will try VGA mode, I pondered on refresh rates, but when RDC'ing onto the machine and changing the refresh rates, surely I should get an output through the monitor? I wonder if there's been a recent video driver update through M$ - although my machine isn't set to auto-update... The monitor's fine though because I've plugged it into other machines and it works suitably with the same resolution I was running on my home machine. I'm going to take a crabby old graphics card home with me tonight and try that. @Wesleyw - yes, I ran the fixmbr, which told me that I had a corrupt or unknown MBR and despite fixing it and rerunning fixmbr, it says the same thing. This one's really got me scratching my head... think I should've bought the wireless router at Christmas after all instead of using my peer-to-peer wireless...
StewartKnight Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Geoff, I'd read about the BIOS rootkit, but I dismissed it, as there are so many differing BIOS's, and you need to start playing with jumpers to flash a lot of them.
Norphy Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 Will try VGA mode, I pondered on refresh rates, but when RDC'ing onto the machine and changing the refresh rates, surely I should get an output through the monitor? No, probably not. Opening a RDP connection to a PC is not like opening a VNC connection. Changing the refresh rate in an RDP session will only apply to the RDP session unlike VNC which takes over the desktop.
indiegirl Posted January 31, 2006 Author Posted January 31, 2006 I too had dismissed the BIOS rootkits, and am still pondering on how (if it is a rootkit kinda issue) it's on there in the first place... Norphy: of course, I did know that... I'll get VNC on there later and see if that helps (after I've attacked it with a different graphics card) I've successfully booted into Safe Mode with it, so perhaps there is something funny going on refreshrate wise... I've got a GeForce 5200 (this is off the top of my head, the machine's old!) and a LG 17"TFT...
Geoff Posted January 31, 2006 Posted January 31, 2006 No, probably not. Opening a RDP connection to a PC is not like opening a VNC connection. Changing the refresh rate in an RDP session will only apply to the RDP session unlike VNC which takes over the desktop. Use the "-console" command line option if you want to access the local console of a machine using RDP.
indiegirl Posted February 6, 2006 Author Posted February 6, 2006 Sorry to bump this again, but I'm still stuck with the damn thing. What I've done so far: 1. Plugged monitor into laptop - tested at all resolutions and refresh rates that the laptop would give out - all seems fine, it's not the monitor! 2. Opened a console onto the home PC via the laptop, changed res / refreshrate - no change - still goes into standby mode. I've pulled the graphics card out and popped it in a machine here today, it displays everything up to 1280 x 1024 with no problems. So - my last (and final) thought is that the AGP socket on my mobo's faulty - could that be possible? Obviously without getting another AGP card I can't test it! I'm going around in circles here trying to work out what the heck is going on. I think I'm going to give up and build a new machine as mine's 3 years old now... and isn't running FM2006 very well (much to the OH's annoyance). Athlon 64, socket 939 here we come...!!!
Sirbendy Posted February 6, 2006 Posted February 6, 2006 I suppose it could be the AGP slot..but I'd be surprised if you're getting no post errors codes from the speaker.. Got any old PCI Graphics cards knocking about? I always keep a few in my filing cabinet.
Geoff Posted February 6, 2006 Posted February 6, 2006 Bios is set to look for the gfx on the PCI bus perhaps?
indiegirl Posted February 6, 2006 Author Posted February 6, 2006 @Geoff - nope, I checked that, just in case... @SirB - I have indeedy, seemed fine with PCI graphics... therefore, can only assume AGP slot error as card itself is fine *grumble grumble pants hardware grumble*. Of course, as I'm wanting a better spec'd machine, then as far as my OH is concerned, it's "definitely not an easy repair, we would be much better off investing in a new machine" *cough*
E1uSiV3 Posted February 6, 2006 Posted February 6, 2006 Tell em an SLi PCIe machine is more robust and will last longer while your at it... :twisted:
mac_shinobi Posted February 6, 2006 Posted February 6, 2006 just to clear things up a bit here , it loads to the desktop and after a while the screen goes to sleep or it goes blank and then you cant get it out of going to standby or being blank or anything ? What about resetting the bios to optimized settings or fail safe settings ? Also there are normally S3 and S1 resume settings in the bios, and also in the power savings section of the bios, might be worth while checking that out. Also as a last resort what about a bios update Short of that a new system would defintly do the trick
mac_shinobi Posted February 6, 2006 Posted February 6, 2006 After you have done that would also be curious to see if a different hard drive would make much difference since you did say about the fixmbr repeating the same error message. Also what about the fixboot command in the recovery console
mac_shinobi Posted February 6, 2006 Posted February 6, 2006 Just had another thought, you could always try the chkdsk /r command in the recovery console, obviously the chkdsk command has other switches, so might be worth while looking into what those switches are
indiegirl Posted February 7, 2006 Author Posted February 7, 2006 Well, last night I bit the bullet and rebuilt the machine on a new HD... all seems fine. I needed a clearout anyway as the old version was rather sluggish (you never notice these things until you rebuild!) To confirm: it went through POST and the XP splash screen, display was fine. Got to Windows desktop (I had autologin), monitor went into standby and wouldn't come out. Did chkdsk /r, reset bios all before rebuilding. Can only assume that refreshrate was changed on profile on old HD, and new build has diff refreshrate... we hope. I shall see how it goes...
Geoff Posted February 7, 2006 Posted February 7, 2006 Use the right monitor driver this time so they can't specific imossible refresh rates.
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