Apollo922

I had Norton Anti-Virus on the Gateway, and I would run scans regularly. I can't remember exactly what the name of the virus was, but it was something like tracking cookie backdoor something or other. Then I did a free scan with the AVG anti-virus program, and it came up with a trojan horse virus. I don't know where this would come from. I would also get constant notifications from Norton in the bottom right hand corner of my screen saying "a recent attempt to attack your computer was blocked." I will have to try the ideas you all suggested, or maybe even bring the computer somewhere and have a professional try those ideas for me, since I'm not sure if I'm capable of it myself, since I'm not very experienced with computers.

Thank you for the replies. Also, I'm pretty sure there is a virus on my old computer. I don't know if that's what caused this to happen, but if I did follow through with what you're telling me to do, would the virus carry over to the new PC?

I have a Gateway with Windows Vista. I bought it roughly 2 years ago. It had been running normally as far as I know. Last weekend, it started to make a revving up (vroom) noise whenever I turned it on. The blue light around the power button would flash as well when it made this noise, and sometimes the light would just go off all together. Once it was up and running, any slight movement I made with the mouse would cause it to make that same revving sound again. I was still able to operate everything pretty normally, it was just that this sound was starting to get somewhat irritating. A few days after this, the computer wouldn't start at all. I would turn it on, hear the same sound as I did before. The monitor would show the Gateway logo for a second, leading me to believe the computer was starting, but a second later, I got the "No Signal" message with the red, blue and green bars. So that is where I stand as of now. I cannot even start it up at this point, and being a photographer, I upload all of my pictures onto that computer. I'm really upset at the fact that I might lose years worth of photos. I'm not sure what is causing this, which is why I'm here. My main concern is saving my pictures. I have since bought a new PC, an HP Pavilion Slimline, suggested by a friend who is more knowledgeable than myself. But if there is any way possible, I need to get a number of files from the Gateway and somehow get them on the new HP. Any ideas on what could be wrong? Thank you in advance.