boots to maximised ie screen and hangs

[saturdaygig]

Well, this is a new one on me.

I have a PC running XP which is doing this. It boots up, opens a 'cannot find page' screen that covers the whole desktop, no buttons showing anywhere so I can't close it. ctrl-alt-del doesn't bring up the task manager. A boot to safe mode gives the same result. a boot to 'last known good config also gives the same result.
I used an xp install disk and went to repair centre, which dropped me into a dos screen with the command prompt - this was working but I can't think of anything to do from here that might help.
Of course it may be virussy (its used by a pesky teenager) but I'd need to get in to run mbam or something.



Any suggestions?

[falcon2000]

Looks like it's in full screen mode. Press F11 to see if you can get the regular window back.

It boots up, opens a 'cannot find page' screen that covers the whole desktop

You don't mean the computer boots right to this w/o you opening up IE, do you? Or do you mean the computer boots normally but when you try to use IE, you then get this?

[SuperSparks]

Download this and burn it to CD, then you can boot up with the disc in the drive and run Malwarebytes and AntiVir from there:

Hiren's Boot CD

[saturdaygig]

Falcon2000 - yes, I did mean what I said, it boots straight to that screen. I don't have to start up ie or do anything at all but switch it on. F11 was a good idea, but it didn't work.

Supersparks - I used Hiren's boot Cd to run superantispyware and antivir. Both found a couple of things, but the pc still has the same boot up error.

I'm thinking its going to be quicker to reinstall windows, since all the data on the pc is on a d: drive so nothing would be lost. Unless anyone has a smart idea?

[SuperSparks]

Actually, that's exactly what I would do in the same situation, particularly with XP, which needs an occasional clean reinstall anyway.

[saturdaygig]

Actually, that's exactly what I would do in the same situation, particularly with XP, which needs an occasional clean reinstall anyway.

Well, it hasn't so long since had a reinstall, plus I do like to fix issues like this if possible. Anyway, I've started now and the issue seems to run really deep - windows install was hanging at 'searching for existing windows installations' and I had to go back to the boot disk and delete/re-create the c:\ partition to get it moving.

[Midknyte]

I used an xp install disk and went to repair centre, which dropped me into a dos screen with the command prompt - this was working but I can't think of anything to do from here that might help.

That's not how you do a repair install.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm