I think I might have a virus on my PC. I know it was my fault for downloading some sketchy stuff, but now I'm stuck. After running the program, I immediately tried to turn on Windows Defender, but it told me I need admin access, which is a red flag. I attempted to reset my PC, but it got stuck at 6% for half an hour, so I rebooted it. Now, my computer is stuck in a boot loop. I even took out the CMOS battery to reset the BIOS, but I can still access the BIOS. Unfortunately, it just won't load into Windows. I made a new bootable drive hoping that would help, but it didn't work. I'm trying to fix this myself because I really don't want to send it out for repair, especially since I'm going on holiday in two days. Any advice on what I should do next?
3 Answers
So if it comes to that, does that mean I'll have to buy a new drive?
You can create a Windows installer USB using another computer. Just get a USB flash drive, and then use that other PC to set it up. It's a solid way to reinstall Windows and should help you get past the boot loop.
On another machine, check out this link for creating the USB boot device: [Rescue Disk by Trend Micro](https://www.trendmicro.com/en_us/forHome/products/free-tools/rescue-disk.html)!
If that doesn't work, you might need to pull the drive out and either wipe it using another computer or just replace it altogether and install Windows fresh.
That's actually what I ended up doing too.