Black Screen + IO loss of control

My screen turns black and mouse & keyboard input have no effect in two functions:

1. When energy saver function turns on, with only a command to turn of monitor, I lose control of access. Crtl F1 does nothing, as well as Crtl+Alt+Del+Tab (which used to work) and ESC. Must reboot by hitting reset button.

2. When reformatting on A:, same thing happens after Norton warning screen pops up asking to abort/continue/? because of virus like activity - C\* trying to write to boot sector of drive A:

This did not happen last year and has caused loss of production ans, sometimes, data. I can not remember what event brought these symptoms on or which MS update.

Always grateful for a little help, Goaglen.

 

A boot sector virus will do this, unless you are formatting with the transfer system files option.
Housecall, online AV scan

 

Thank you, Markp62.

Just ran a house call, as I did last month, to verify NAV results of no virus. Came up clean (although NAV liveupdate is not installing after 9/24).

Suspected something like you described, just do not have evidence if virus.

 

Hi.

I am having the same problem with one of my 98SE machines. It is a Toshiba Portege laptop. 128MB and a 400 celeron processor. The user, used windows update to apply some patches. After applying the patches, everything seemed fine, the machine rebooted ok and the system was humming along. After a period of time the user went onto the internet and while browsing, the machine went into a black screen and then the machine was rendered useless, no mouse or keyboard movement etc. Only by pushing the reset button did something happen. The machine has an up to date virus checker, so no threat or possible virus could cause this. We have tried to re-install IE and have disabled the Critical update notification service. Has anybody got any thoughts on this?

Regards

 

This is just a reach here, but were driver [video] updates installed from the M$ site? I have seen on this forum where these have caused problems.

 

Hi

I am not sure if it was a VIDEO driver update that was installed. As is with M$, when your updates are ready to install, everything comes at once. After thinking about that possible error, maybe you can help us then. If I was to uninstall the currant VIDEO driver and install the older and outdated version, would the currant and new Update patch still run or will the older version take control?

Regards

 

While Critical Updates are automatically selected, the Driver Updates are another section of the update page. You have to go there and select them in order to select them.
If you were to uninstall the newer ones, and then install the older ones, the newer ones will not automatically jump in and take over.