BleepingComputer.com: black screen of death after dell logo splash

this older dell computer had a fake windows security virus on it. I managed to get MBAM to work and it cleared it off...i thought.

the next day the display color was all wrong, my wife was playing solitaire and said some cards where missing, then it froze. the only way to shut it down was a hard boot. when it came back up, after the dell logo it was just a black screen. I tried to go into safe mode, and all i got was a black screen with a little white cursor line in the top left corner. none of the other options worked at all. for instance if i tried to go back to the last good configuration...nothing just black screen.

after spending the day reading I got the computer to boot from a disc and load a version of puppy linux. and got it back online..

now I am turning to you guys and your vast knowledge...

I imagine that that virus corrupted a file somewhere, and now windows will not boot. I saw several posts that claimed that the file can be repaired and windows will work again, however there was not much information on the steps for the repair. While I can deal with using linux this computer is used mostly by my kids, and they are used to windows.


Thanks in advance for your help.


p.s.

I don't think this came with a restore disk when we bought it from Dell.