post from security forum (not sure where this fits)

[charonzen]

My fiance's Dell Inspiron laptop recently began to act up. Her computer screen started to power down randomly. Just the screen; the computer power stayed on and the fan was heard. There was no key combination to get the screen to start back up. I set the power options to "never", but that didn't help. We took it to a local repair shop and they confirmed that there was heat damage. They ran it overnight; I am not sure whether they ran it inside WinXPPro or just at the login screen. It did not crash; she took it home and it crashed. We took it back and they found something wrong with the hibernation mode (probably in BIOS, but I don't know for sure.) She took it home and it crashed again. It's currently back at the shop. I believe they have scanned it with Norton since she is running McAfee and ZoneAlarm. I am not sure if they are using her power cord and/or battery supply while in the shop. I am not even sure yet if it is a hardware problem, or if in fact there is a new virus going around that shows these characteristics. Has anyone heard of or seen anything like this? Or does anyone have another idea of what it could be, if not a virus? Is it possible that her battery is causing this, even though she's running off the cord, and/or vice versa? Sorry that this doesn't quite fit the forum; I'm not sure of the scope of the problem. I am posting elsewheres as well. Thanks if anyone has an idea about this.

charonzen

[Panama Red]

Let's use the other thread for this problem. Please don't cross post.

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