Virus, graphics card, or what?

Ellie

New Member
Hi there! This is my first post, so I hope it is in the right area... :]

Okay, so about a week ago I went to download a torrent of a game, which turned out to be a virus... it wanted me to restart my computer, and then wouldn't let me start it up again (it would show me my background, but the explorer and none of the icons would come up.) So... I reformatted it.
But, I had never reformatted anything before so I did my best... I installed drivers (properly, I think..?) and everything.
My computer is a 6 year old Dell that's usually pretty slow.. but now it randomly freezes up in some msn windows and other times takes a while to respond.
I'm wondering if it is possible for the virus to have not been erased when I reformatted? The reason I ask is because I get these random dots every once in a while randomly on my screen.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/EllieBellie99/weird.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v224/EllieBellie99/weird2.jpg

(the green dots generally only show up on pictures.)
I also play Counter-Strike, and the graphics have been really bad and choppy.. so I am wondering if it is my video or graphics card.

I really have no idea about anything to do with computers, so if anyone knows what is going on and can explain it to me like I'm 7 that would be great. :P

Thanks a lot!
-Ellie
 
judging by the pictures, my first gues would be your grafic's card is running hot. have you cleaned your pc inside yet? (using the vacuum cleaner to get the dust out of the heatsink of the grafic's card for example :) )

I am wondering too tough, did you format all the harddisks when you installed windows? (when you instal it, it shows you harddrives (and, well basicly parts of harddrives called partitions. ) did you format all of them, and then installed windows, or did you only format the one labeled C:? (or do you only have 1 partition/harddisk?)
because if you have more than 1 partition/hadrdisk, its possible that if you didnt format it, the virus was on that disk, and infected your windows as soon as it was installed again.
either way, I'd first clean the pc on the inside, that might do the trick already. :)
 
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