PC Artifacting and Freezing on Startup

[LarienTiwele]

Hi,

First off, thank you in advance for any help/suggestions you may have.

Earlier tonight, after running a Virus Scan on my PC with Symantec AntiVirus, it came up with one trojan and a piece of spyware or two and after the scan, auto deleted them. For a While my PC worked fine, but about 2 hours later, after I did a disc cleanup as my PC was also down to under 1.5 GB of space, my PC started to lag really bad to the point it was just before a full freeze, so I closed out of what I could to try and stop it before it froze, to no avail.

After I restarted my PC, it seemed to load up fine, until all the basic applications and Icons on the main screen loaded (Running Windows XP) then within about 10 seconds of the finished icon images loading, the screen appeared to artifact or such and freeze, where Keyboard and mouse ceased to work.

I already tried safe mode and seem able to get in via that route fine (It was my desktop image that seemed to cause the artifacting), but have no clue what to do from safe mode to attempt to fix, other then to back up what files I can etc.

If I can get my mom's PC to load any time soonish, I'll have a crappy Digital camera picture or two of what my desktop looks like after it happens for a betterish idea of what I mean about the screen.

Edit: Also, if you need more details, let me know and I'll do my best to provide them.

[Kryssan]

Ewww. Norton. If you have the capability to run a cleaning program in safe mode I'd highly recommend that. If Norton found something chances are the iceberg is still there. Especially if safe mode is working as intended. If you're aware of the normal background processes your computer runs, you can try checking there to see if anything suspicious remains, but your best bet is through safe mode.


If your computer is clean reinstall your video drivers, using something like DH to make sure no traces remain. People tend to use the word 'artifacting' to cover a variety of things that don't really fall into that category so without some more information that's the best advice I can give.

[LarienTiwele]

So far I haven't had any luck, so I'm backing up important stuff now, and looking at a new PC since mine was around 9 years old, anyways.

Can anyone tell me if these specs are decent for the price while I continue trying to save current PC? (Sadly, I'm poor so cant afford the super pricey PCs)

Newegg.com - iBUYPOWER Gamer Power 509 Athlon X2 7750(2.7GHz) 4GB DDR2 500GB NVIDIA GeForce 9500 GT Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit - Desktop PCs -> The PC I'm looking at to replace mine.