I'm pretty useless with computers apart from the basics - so just going to explain what's happened in as much detail as possible to see if anyone has any advice!
Cheers.
Last night I was surfing the web, I didn't install any new software and the internet was working fine for me. I opened B1tTorrent and S0ulSeek in order to start downloading a bit of music when my laptop froze (Sony Viao - 4GB RAM, 240GB Hard Drive, Vistax32)
It wouldn't let me do anything, including ctrl alt del, so I held in the power button to re-start.
The laptop restarts, but when windows has loaded the only item I can see in the tray on the bottom right is the "power" icon (showing the laptop is plugged in....
Again it wont let me click anything else so I power off.
I then run system repair - it said no errors were found and recommended system restore. So I also ran system restore, and have repeated this several times over various dates as far back as I can see. When windows loads after a re-store in the "tray" on the bottom right I can see the power icon, the wireless connectivity icon, and the norton 360 icon only - but again it won't let me click anything.
I ran a hardware check using Viao Repair Centre - this ran overnight, and said there are no hardware problems.
I also tried running in safe-mode, however although this does load up, again it won't let me click anything, nothing works, not even ctrl alt del.
Is my only option a complete restore of my laptop? Although not ideal due to everything I have stored on there, I'd obviously be prepared to do it a lot of my stuff is backed up on an external hard drive....
Sounds like something shredded windows; probably a virus given that fact that you use Norton 360.
Given the fact that you don't know much about computers, I assume that you do not have a windows disk, but you probably have a system restore disk. This will destroy everything on the hard drive, so you should backup what is there if possible. You can do this by using a "BartTools" disk; this is windows, but it loads from a DVD, and lets you move your files around with a lot more ease than the command prompt gives you.
