Hello,

I have some sort of virus that I am not sure the name of. Once I find the name, hopefully i can get rid of it.

The virus takes over the entire computer at random times with a blue screen that has a lot of white, typed print and it starts a clock that says it is erasing my hard drive. It says something to the effect of "dumping physical memory" at the bottom of the page and I have to cut off my power source to make it stop and then reboot the computer.

Does anyone what this is called? How do i get rid of it?

Thank you for your help,
Smyth

You may, or may not have a virus. What you're experiencing is called the Blue Screen Of Death. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Screen_of_Death)

More than likely though, you installed a piece of software that has a buggy driver, or attempted to install an incorrect version of a driver for an unsupported piece of hardware.

"Dumping physical memory" is not erasing your hard drive, it is creating a "snapshot" of the system in its current state such that someone proficient in debugging a "crash dump" will be able to observe any abnormal conditions present at the time of the crash.

As bOne said, this sounds very much like a systems problem and not something due to a virus/malware. Malware is generally pretty "silent" because it is mostly written to get money now, and your problem would make it very noticeable. Additionally, if it was due to a virus that had been around for a while, ClamWin would probably have found/identified it during a scan (you have made some ClamWin scans, haven't you?) and told you about it in its Scan Reports.

You should probably check with the company from whom you purchased your computer to see if they could help. You will need to describe how long you have had the problem and describe the circumstances under which it occurs. For what it's worth, if you are comfortable working within Windows, you might try the following suggestions (shown in order of preference). If you aren't comfortable, then most certainly get some professional assistance. There's no shame in that, and you need to get your computer working (so you can make full use of ClamWin).

SUGGESTIONS
1. Use System File Checker (SFC) to check/verify your important Windows files.

2. If you have recently installed a new program, and the problem has been occuring since then, uninstall it and see if that cures your problem.

3. Try using System Restore to restore your system back to a time before you had the problem.

Good luck.

Regards,