Is there a way to Find what video card is installed in my comp? I got a virus on one of my computers and so i had to restore the factory settings on it. The problem is i installed a different video card from the factory one in order to have more screen space for monitors, when it reverted to factory settings i am no longer picking up the newer video card. Also if i can figure out what kind of video card it is without breaking open the case, how do i find the drivers and install them, im pretty sure it is an nvidia video card but i dont know the model. any help is much appreciated Thx.
It appears restoring it to factory settings didnt fix it, it still freezes on me, could a virus have gotten through the system restore? It was all done off the harddrive. What is happening is it locks up on me either once im in windows or sometimes it just doesnt even boot up properly, is there somewhere i can go to run a diagnostics test?
Try Start/control panel/System/Hardware tab/Device Manager/ and look under the display adapters icon. You could try rollback driver or update driver, assuming it finds the card you have correctly. Freezing certainly sounds like a virus. Get malewarebytes from a USB stick on another computer, and boot up in safe mode to install and run it. If you are not freezing in BIOS boot, the culprit is likely a virus. If you want a thorough cleaning, do some research on combofix; don't just run it blindly-- it's super DDT for rootkits and deep cleaning.
Could a virus have made it through the restore, my computer literally went back to the way it was when i bought it out of the box when i restored it to factory settings, but i used the restore button off the actual comp, i never made recovery discs. HP has a program where i can check my PC health and it says everything hardware related is running fine. Sorry if these questions are dumb im somewhat computer illiterate
No questions are dumb. Hard to say exactly without seeing the system. I haven't done too many restores, so I'm not certain how far it rolls back, nor how clean it is (as far as I would hazard a guess, nothing is guaranteed fully clean aside from reformatting the drive). I'm sure you'll get a comment with more insight on this issue, but for now try the suggestions I made; they can't hurt (excepting maybe combofix, if you're not careful). Your description sounds like a virus, although there are occasionally other hardware failures that surface. Just have to troubleshoot and continue asking questions along the way.
Thx for the response, im currently running combofix, i tried it before i did the restore, but i couldnt even get it to run long enough without freezing to get through, it comes highly reccommended so im just hoping i can get it to run long enough to get through. It seems i can go longer ewithout freezing now but it stil does it to me..... I will let you know how it works out. I would honestly like to castrate whoever the assholes are that create these viruses. Thx again.
Computer also appears to start easier if i wait a couple minutes before restarting, which i thought might be it overheating, but it does not appear to be kicking off any extra heat. I have another comp which is the exact same as the one that is causing me problems and both appear to be kicking off the same amount of heat.
If you think heating is an issue 1) See if you can monitor it for a while in BIOS. If I recall correctly, it updates in real time. While you're at it, check the voltages. There's also a free heat/fan monitoring program called speedfan that looks at this stuff on the desktop (although I don't think you have access to it at the moment?). 2) Open up the case and blow in a house fan just to see if it affects the video problem you observe, if not, then it's not likely a heating issue and vice versa.
I got in long enough to run speedfan for a bit, the temp is going to 41 celcius, my other comp which is the same make and model gets to 38, would this make enough of a difference to make it crash? Also the CPU is spiking randomly on the infected comp. Thx again for the help
I doubt 3 degrees difference would do much. I've got stuff running much hotter without any problems. Did combo fix print out a clean bill of health? You need to be patient and let it run for a while till it is fully done. Also, run it on safe mode AFTER maleware bytes was also run on safe mode. CPU spiking randomly can be bad or nothing; if you knew good programs from bad, you could look at task mgr, to see what's drawing the spikes. I've recommended in the past, because I think the moderators are great, but you can go to the bullguard forums and get more free help on the software end. http://forum.bullguard.com/forum/ There was another recent thread, where the poster had caps blown on his video card. If you have another computer, you can start swapping parts if you suspect it's hardware failure.