sound like a virus?

hi all,
thanks in advance for the help.
i am dealing with a compaq prisario 5000 model 3wv270.
a month or so ago it started having difficulty restoring
windows after they were minimized. would minimize a
window and it would go to the taskbar, left click would
not restore the window, right click then left click on
restore would not restore the window. the only option
was to ctrl/alt/del and close the window/program. this
initially was intermittant and increased in frequency
over the month. also, during the month the machine began
struggling to boot. slow boots occasionally increasing
to incomplete boots now. it will boot to the start of
loading the desktop then go black, after a few seconds a
small square of desktop will appear in the upper left
corner. at this point ctrl/alt/del does not respond and
the only way to shut the maching down is to hold the
power button or unplug the machine.
virus, bad ram, HD issues, or vid card issues? any ideas?
again, thanks.
Chris

John
Tue Dec 02 06:48:43 CST 2003

It could be a virus, did you scan your machine with an up to date virus
scanner? May as well run an AdAware or Spybot scan while you're at it.

If it's not a virus my intuition tells me that it's your Compaq Shell
acting up. Se here on how to replace it with the Windows Explorer shell:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q237/8/88.ASP&NoWebContent=1

John

Chris wrote:

> hi all,
> thanks in advance for the help.
> i am dealing with a compaq prisario 5000 model 3wv270.
> a month or so ago it started having difficulty restoring
> windows after they were minimized. would minimize a
> window and it would go to the taskbar, left click would
> not restore the window, right click then left click on
> restore would not restore the window. the only option
> was to ctrl/alt/del and close the window/program. this
> initially was intermittant and increased in frequency
> over the month. also, during the month the machine began
> struggling to boot. slow boots occasionally increasing
> to incomplete boots now. it will boot to the start of
> loading the desktop then go black, after a few seconds a
> small square of desktop will appear in the upper left
> corner. at this point ctrl/alt/del does not respond and
> the only way to shut the maching down is to hold the
> power button or unplug the machine.
> virus, bad ram, HD issues, or vid card issues? any ideas?
> again, thanks.
> Chris