Strange message at boot - not Thinkpad related.

[ideal-pc]

Hi all,

Has anybody ever heard of this? one of my work colleagues has a strange message when trying to boot his Advent laptop, it is simply a black screen with the message "CAN {a" smiley face is present inside the C though! My first thoughts would be some kind of boot virus, but seeing as I have never heard of such an occurrence thought I would ask on here.

That's pretty much it, he cannot seem to do anything else with the machine. Anyone heard of anything like this before? as it is certainly new to me!

[spuddog]

Use a live linux cd, see if it boots to it. If it boots to linux then the hardware is ok. Then that would indicate some form of malware.

Scott

[ideal-pc]

Hi Scott,

Yes that is a good point. I will try a Puppy Linux distro when he gets the machine to me, however from what I am told the machine does not even get that far through POST as to assign a boot device.

[rkawakami]

Googling, this is what I find on the subject:

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/59 ... virus.html
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_1131.htm
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1112358
http://forums.opensuse.org/install-boot ... -boot.html

It appears to be a very old boot piece of malware.

[A31]

Hmmm... something Malicious is going on here...
If you can't get rid of it using Anti virus program (recommend Kaspersky myself), then you may need to reinstall Windows or the OS...

[ideal-pc]

Googling, this is what I find on the subject:

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-xp/59 ... virus.html
http://vil.nai.com/vil/content/v_1131.htm
http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=1112358
http://forums.opensuse.org/install-boot ... -boot.html

It appears to be a very old boot piece of malware.

:O Thanks rkawakami, I did try googling it but could not find any results! Knew those old viruses would come back to bite us one day, will try removal & post back.

Thanks all

[ideal-pc]

Right, sorry for the delay. Finally got my hands on the machine today. Here is a link to a picture of the weird message at boot:
http://img697.imageshack.us/img697/2002/img0124d.jpg

Now, I can access BIOS & yes I have tried re-flashing.
I have tried a full reset by disconnecting all power including CMOS battery & leaving for a few hours
I can boot from the internal CD-ROM, running Mandriva one live now.
I cannot boot from the hard drive.
This message appears whether the hard drive is in the machine or not
I have scanned the drive for viruses, found a couple of trojans but nothing too sinister

It obviously cannot be drive related because it does it without the hard drive being installed :S

You think the BIOS is fried? Board failure? I have never seen anything like this before. I thought it must be virus related at first but don't know of any virus that can survive no hard drive & no power, i.e. no CMOS batter either!!

Any suggestions appreciated.

[GomJabbar]

I have read there are viruses that can infect the BIOS firmware. It would seem the best defense would be to turn off the flashing option in the BIOS except when you actually plan to upgrade or flash the BIOS. After the fact, I suspect that motherboard is toast.

EDIT: Here is a link about one such...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/bios-v ... ,7400.html

[ideal-pc]

Hmmmm, pretty interesting stuff that! Thanks for the info. I would say your right, either that or just a corrupt BIOS to start with! I am sure my mate will be over the moon

[Beaver]

If the machine is re-flashed and it wont boot from internal drive it's maybe damaged disk controller.

[ideal-pc]

If the machine is re-flashed and it wont boot from internal drive it's maybe damaged disk controller.

Could be, but it will boot from the CD/DVD. I know its a secondary controller but being 2x IDE channels to one controller it should indicate the controller is OK. The machine is only an Advent 7039 anyway, told him to get a proper laptop (Thinkpad )