Computer will not boot, no display, nothing; SOLVED!

While this is about my XPS M1730, I highly suspect this issue affects many other models and brands...

A few weeks ago while browsing the Internet logged into Vista as the Administrator (i.e. no confirmation pop-ups), my computer got infected by a really nasty malware virus called “AV Security Suite” despite having all Windows updates and current Norton Internet Security (NIS) updates. A NIS support engineer remotely connected to my computer and was able to remove the virus but damage to the O/S had already been done. So I put in a support request to Microsoft to see if the O/S could be repaired but it could not. So, I replaced the drive in my computer, placed the old drive in a USB box, and did a fresh install of Vista on the new hard drive.

About two weeks later, my computer, an XPS M1730, began to have problems booting up. When I would push the power button, the power light would come on and the hard disk activity light would flicker briefly, but there was nothing else; no display, no keyboard backlight, nothing. If I pressed the power button again, I could hear the drive and the fans stop. If I repeated the power on/off process 10 or 20 times, the computer would finally boot.

I was SURE that the problem was a hardware problem unrelated to the virus infection. I even ordered another motherboard. But then I decided to download the BIOS update program from Dell even though it was the same BIOS version that I already had. I ran the BIOS application which then caused the computer to reboot. However, the computer didn’t reboot and just hung up like it had been doing. But after pushing the power button to turn off the non-booting session and then powered it up again, it booted and has booted every time since.

My conclusion is that the “AV Security Suite” virus (and I'm sure other viruses) have the ability to damage but not infect the BIOS. I did a Google search for “XPS M1730 won’t boot” and found many people that have had problems with not only the M1730s but also other Dell models where the computer would fail to even get to Pre Boot Assessment. None of the posts that I read mentioned anything about a prior virus infection of the computer. I think that the virus might damage the BIOS in such a way that the ‘no-boot’ problem is programmed to not cause a problem for a couple of weeks (or a certain number of reboots) after the infection so as to cause users to think that the infection and the no-boot problem are unrelated.

I can find absolutely nothing on the Web about BIOS being damaged by malware and I’m absolutely convinced that the “AV Security Suite” malware damaged the BIOS on my computer causing the motherboard to appear to be bad. So I’m writing this up and sending it to Microsoft, Symantec (Norton Internet Security), and Dell in hopes that this information will help people recover from the infections.

People need to know that if their computer gets infected with a virus, any virus, then even if they format or replace the hard drive to get rid of the virus, they need to update the BIOS while they can still boot the computer which might take 20+ times of pressing the power button to get it to boot.