I had already tried most of the solutions from your first link, and I did follow all the instructions from the guide on how to use the rescue cd, and none of them worked. However, I did manage to get back into my computer by using the rescue cd's File Manager to rename the AVG folder in Program Files (x86), as per the recommendation on this website: http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/How-To-Disable-Avg-When-It-Crashes-Your-Computer.htm. I am sorry to say that I am now going to have to uninstall AVG and stop using it for the indefinite future. It was my antivirus program of choice, but I don't want to have any possibility of this problem occuring again.
I know that there have been several similar questions to this before, but none of their solutions worked for me.
Starting a couple days ago, whenever I start up my computer, I have been unable to get to Windows. Every time, after showing the Dell logo, it goes to a black screen and with these messages in white text: (each message also has a timestamp)
Phase 0 : Starting Watch Dog Initialization :
Phase 0 : Loading Config… (roots krnl, setup)
Phase 0 : Pre initialization events.
Phase 0 : Creating Watch Dog dynamic key list.
Phase 0 : subsystems initialization.
Phase 0 : finished.
Phase 1 : Initialize components …
Phase 1 : Starting reactor …
Phase 1 : Starting components …
Phase 1 : Starting internal subsystems …
Phase 1 : Starting command channels …
Phase 1 : Srm start actions …
Phase 1 : Starting external subsystems …
Phase 1 : finished.
I know that AVG has a service that runs on startup, but in researching this problem,
I have also found that there is a virus/Trojan/rootkit (I've seen it called all three) called Watch Dog.
So my question is, is this being caused by AVG, or is it malware?
And how do I fix it?
What I've already tried:
Following the instructions on this page to disable AVG using an AVG rescue disk
https://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en_US&urlName=Disabling-AVG-when-Windows-cannot-start
This resulted in my computer failing to boot because a driver was either missing or had errors: avgboota.sys (or something along those lines)
I then tried using Windows' Automatic Repair, but that just got the same error
I tried using Windows installation media to do a system restore, but it failed because it could not access a file
The recommended solution to that problem is to disable your antivirus, but I can't do that
I did try doing system restore after using the aforementioned guide to disable AVG using the rescue disk, but it still had the same problem
I have tried to boot into safe mode, but in Windows 10, it seems F8/Shift+F8 rarely works, so I haven't been able to successfully get into safe mode
Thanks in advance for any help!
I had already tried most of the solutions from your first link, and I did follow all the instructions from the guide on how to use the rescue cd, and none of them worked. However, I did manage to get back into my computer by using the rescue cd's File Manager to rename the AVG folder in Program Files (x86), as per the recommendation on this website: http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/How-To-Disable-Avg-When-It-Crashes-Your-Computer.htm. I am sorry to say that I am now going to have to uninstall AVG and stop using it for the indefinite future. It was my antivirus program of choice, but I don't want to have any possibility of this problem occuring again.
Thank you for the information, Philippe.
We are glad to know that you were able to use the Rescue CD File manager and rename the AVG folder as mentioned in this website: http://antivirus.about.com/od/securitytips/ht/How-To-Disable-Avg-When-It-Crashes-Your-Computer.htm .
We are sorry to know that you have uninstalled AVG. This indeed disappointing.
Our developers started working on this watchdog issue and soon they will come up with the fix. We assure you that this kind of issues wouldn't occur in the mere future.