Hung during a boot time scan

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bdh5574

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Oct 28, 2013
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10,510
My daughter has a Toshiba L755-S5158 laptop. She runs Avast as anti-virus software. During her regular scan, it found something, moved it to the chest and suggested she run a boot time scan. I think she clicked ok and it proceed to boot and run the scan. She then closed the cover and now, it only has a black screen. When she presses the power button, it only changes the power indicator light, nothing else.
How can she get out of this situation?

Thanks, Bob
 
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H
Unfortunately, from the symptoms you describe, the first thing that occurs to me is that there has been a motherboard failure.

And that the timing of the scan is coincidental.

But before I went and ordered a new one, I would try to think how the antivirus program could have achieved these symptoms.

I'm thinking that when the computer was last restarted, the AV program re-wrote part of the boot sector in order to run the bootup scan. The scanning program which would have been running in the memory may have been responsible for writing back to the boot sector correctly in order for BIOS to direct the computer to the correct loader for the Windows system.

Or something.

Given that, I would remove the power supply and the battery and...
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himnextdoor

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Oct 26, 2013
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Unfortunately, from the symptoms you describe, the first thing that occurs to me is that there has been a motherboard failure.

And that the timing of the scan is coincidental.

But before I went and ordered a new one, I would try to think how the antivirus program could have achieved these symptoms.

I'm thinking that when the computer was last restarted, the AV program re-wrote part of the boot sector in order to run the bootup scan. The scanning program which would have been running in the memory may have been responsible for writing back to the boot sector correctly in order for BIOS to direct the computer to the correct loader for the Windows system.

Or something.

Given that, I would remove the power supply and the battery and then I would either leave it for ten minutes and then retry, (in case the processor had been set to deep sleep of something, or/and remove the CMOS battery which, if there is no reset available, should cause BIOS to be reset to defaults.

Give it ten, even twenty minutes, attach the power supply, not the battery, and try to restart. Maybe you'll get lucky.

Do you hear a faint click from the CDROM when you power up?
 
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bdh5574

Honorable
Oct 28, 2013
2
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10,510
Well, she lucked out. I told her to let it sit for several hours, hoping that it was running the scan but we just couldn't tell. When she checked it, about 3 hours later, it had finished and booted into Windows.
I was grabbing at straws because I had no idea what to try next.

Thanks for your suggestions.
Bob
 
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