T61: Need Help with booting problem (Virus?)

[wahoo42]

This past weekend AVG (virus protection) found several "threats" and " healed" them. I'm pretty sure that it actually just picked up spyware protection program (Spywarebot) and uninstalled it. I shut down my computer and left for the evening. When I restarted the next morning, it got to the login page (I'm running Vista) and before I could swipe my finger, it would shut down and restart, cycling through the process as long as I would let it go. I have a T61 btw. I"m guessing that in the "healing process" that something in the bootup software got erased. Does anyone have any suggestions? I would very much prefer not to lose the information on my harddrive and I haven't backed up in several months (stupid me). Thanks for your help!

I've had the suggestion of sticking the vista CD in upon restart and letting it "fix" the missing files. The only vista cd I have (it came with it) is the "update"...will that work?

The other suggestion I've had is to go onto the lenovo website and download the startup files...After scanning through the possible downloads, I have no idea which ones those would be.

[alacrityathome]

wahoo,

Here are some suggestions:

...get your data first by booting up with a live linux cd....like ubuntu 7.10. Linux can read your windows files and copy them to usb storage.

...then test your RAM by downloading Memtest86 v3.4 iso. Boot it up and run it thru 2 full passes.

...then download Hiren's ISO boot disk to boot into raw DOS to do your CHKDSK /r. That will repair corrupted files

...it sounds like it also could be your boot mbr....and I am only familiar with XP on how to repair the mbr.

Hope that helps.

Alacrity