I'm pretty sure that I have a virus. When I turn my computer on, one of two things happens: 1. It starts up fine (except for a few mis-colored spots on the first page) and then the screen shuts off. I've tried pressing all the buttons on the screen, but to no avail. The screen stays blank as if it was never turned on. 2. I start it up in safe mode with networking. This lets me actually log on to the computer. But my desktop background (a flash image) doesn't show up. Also, my screen has about 50 yellow lines running down my screen vertically. How do I go about removing this virus from my computer?

How do you know this is a virus? Have you run an anti-virus program and found one? Very well could be hardware failure. Your active desktop (flash image) WILL NOT , by default, load when you use Safe Mode. You make no mention of what computer, monitor or video interface you are using. Rule #1 Good computers don't go down. Rule #2 There is no such thing as a good computer.

Do monitors just fail all of a sudden? What free anti-virus programs do you recommend? I'm using a Dell Computer...that's all I really know about it right now.

from what you describe, the spots and vertical yellow lines, I'd say its a graphics card failure. my comp booted up with that right before my graphics card failed... not very nice. just get a new card. if you're using a crt screen, they rarely fail like that. free antivirus: AVG http://www.grisoft.com/

Well, the lines went away for a while. Then, they came back on all of a sudden. I suspect now that it is surely the graphics card. There is a fan on the card, but it is not running. Is it supposed to be running? If so, could this be the problem? Is there any way to fix it?

Hey, I too have that same problem. When I start my comp there are smiley faces or weird symbols all over the screen. When it'is in windows there are yellow vertical lines on the screen. I've tried re-installing video drivers, disabling some hardware to free up power, changing resolutions but I'm still faced witht the same prob. I have opened an "exe" file which didn't function properly prior to this happening so I suspect it may be a virus. I've scanned my comp for viruses and it detected 1 which I have deleted. Athlon64 3000, Gigabyte K8VT800 Pro, 512 ram, ATI Radeon 9600xt, 160gb WD sata, Pioneer DVR-104. Regards, Colin