Ok well my friend was using Internet explorer and his computer froze up, he rebooted in normal mode got past the password screen and when he got to the desktop his computer froze again. He then started in safe mode and get password screen and it gets to the desktop and it freezes again. He has lots of important coursework and really needs help.

Many thanks to all

What kind of freeze is it? Can he still move his mouse or does that stop moving as well?

If the mouse does stop moving, do the keyboard lights (ie caps lock etc) respond or not?

He can move the mouse and the keyboard works

Alright, that's a good thing. When it locks up, has he tried leaving it for a while to see if it unfreezes in case it's simply become stuck doing something?

Other than that, there might be some kind of malware...can he remember if he installed something or did anything particular just before the freezing occurred? Something that might have previously been overlooked?

I would suggest scanning the PC for viruses, or downloading the free version of Malwarebytes and running a scan, however if the freezing is preventing this then that suggestion is not a lot of help.

All is not lost however. You can always remove the hard drive and put it into another computer temporarily to access his coursework files. If it is indeed Malware, you might want to scan the computer accessing the hard drive afterwards incase the Malware went for a walk into the other hard drive.

Live disk would work too

That might help, but it would be useful if you supplied information as to how to go about doing this.

Well, it could be a disk or (I think) any USB storage device, google is your best friend for this.

It could be time for Puppy Linux to save the day :3

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