I was surfing the web yesterday when all of a sudden I saw a black window appear that ran some .exe file. I was not downloading anything just surfing. Moments later all the windows closed and a fake antivirus program opened by itself and starting scanning my computer. The program had a fake windows symbol and it would not close. There was also some addon that was preventing me from opening any internet browsers. At least, that is what warning windows were telling me. Simultaneously, my real antivirus program (symantec) was quarantining about 7 infected files. Some of them were in the windows system folder and some were in temporary file folders. Unfortunately, I forget the names. I decided to reboot my computer and it rebooted fine. However, the fake antivirus program starting running again and I could not open any browsers. I decided to try and reboot in safe mode by running msconfig. During the reboot a blue screen popped up saying there was some error. Now I cannot run XP at all. I keep getting the error message. I tried rebooting in safe mode, safe mode with networking, previous working settings, start windows normally, etc. None work. I can however press F2 or F12 and get to those diagnostic and setup screens. Am I screwed? It is a dell laptop and they did not include a Windows XP disc. Please Help. Thank you for your time.
Edited by grindhouse, 13 August 2009 - 10:13 AM.