Windows 7: unknown virus

hey, there has apparently been a virus going around that attacks graphics cards. im afraid that i have this virus because my graphics seem to be deterriating. every time i boot my computer i have to turn on aero effects and window monitoring for my computer to work properly. i have performed many scans and no online scan nor antivirus has detected it. i know a few people whose computer that have already fallen to this virus and they are now having to buy a new computer. i dont have money to buy another laptop.

im using microsoft security essentials and used pandascan for an online scan

It is possible that your graphics GPU is going down. Never heard of this virus though, but i would recommend doing a malware scan using: Malwarebytes. Keep doing virus scans every 2 days, same with malware scans.

I can't verify if there is a virus that out there that attacks graphic cards, but it wouldn't surprise me. But the fact that it runs well in only Aero mode makes it sound more like a windows or graphics driver problem then a virus. Or a misconfiguration of sorts.

You could try the following:

Open the laptop and run the PC, make sure the cooling fan is working on the graphics card.

Try unplugging and re-inserting the card and see if this has any effect.

Verify that the drivers are up to date, for both windows and the graphics card. You may want to reinstall the graphic card drivers.

You can go to this page and d/l and run the symantec online scan, it's free, it will d/l a AV scan engine to your PC and run. Click on "Continue to Symantec Security Scan" and follow the directions. You must be running IE to use this service.

http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/WelcomePage.asp