Could use a little advice myself; apologies for the length of the comment.<br><br>On Tuesday, October 4, I used my Linux machine (Fedora 13 or 14) for various things, including bumbling around the suspect site (which I will refrain from naming). Closed down the machine in good condition, and drove to Arizona the next day.<br>
<br>Used Mom's computer (Windows XP) for various things, including visiting the suspect site and using a link there to forward material to a friend in Stockton (also running Windows). Left the machine running for a while, and when I came back, found the screen frozen. Rebooted manually and found a display "AV Guard," purporting to be an anti-virus program that had identified malware on our system that it could remove (for a fee). Of course, AV Guard is itself a virus.<br>
<br>And a fairly sophisticated one, I should say. It not only blocked anti-virus programming resident in the computer; it also redirected my attempts to download anti-malware on line. It repeatedly froze the machine, until ultimately it simply refused to boot at all. No response to the power switch, just a blinking green led on the power supply. We sent that machine back to the store; I haven't yet heard the outcome.<br>
<br>Of course we called our friends in Stockton and warned them not to download our e-mail. Too late, they were already dealing with the AV Guard. After our warning, they took it to a local pro, who removed it for about $45. Well, those were Windows machines, we expect that kind of vulnerability from Redmond. I run Linux, should have little to worry about.<br>
<br>Guess again. Drove back to Azusa, got home Friday night. And my Linux box, which was working perfectly when I shut it down on Tuesday, refused to boot. It would spin up for a few seconds, then immediately shut down, before even getting a screen display. It would not boot with installation disks from Slackware, Ubuntu, or Fedora. Would not boot with live Fedora. Tried to boot with live Ubuntu and managed to get a few lines of text before the screen froze.<br>
<br>So I pulled the hard drive (this was on my laptop), stuck it in my desktop, saved important files on a memory stick, and did a clean installation of Ubuntu. Put<br> the hard drive back into the laptop and tried to boot. No luck.<br>
<br>I'm left with 3 questions:<br>1) How can this virus hose the BIOS so one machine will not boot, and another appears to have a failed power supply.<br>2) Is there any way to revive my laptop, short of replacing the mother board?<br>
3) Any of you guys need a nearly new battery for an Acer Extensa 1000? <br>