Unclean, Unclean! - Page 3

Praxeas · #21 03-04-2010, 04:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ron

I got Malwarebytes when you told me too. I have AVG from 4 years ago when I purchased my computer.
I just got Avast when a friend recommended it over AVG.

you ran both? I would have ran just malwarebytes it won't take long.

BTW the external drive may be infected, however it might not be spinning because there is no USB connection since you can't actually boot the PC.

You can plug it into any PC and scan it

Ron · #22 03-04-2010, 04:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Praxeas

you ran both? I would have ran just malwarebytes it won't take long.

BTW the external drive may be infected, however it might not be spinning because there is no USB connection since you can't actually boot the PC.

You can plug it into any PC and scan it

Actually, I had a friend bring over his lap top & he had a cable with a connector
to connect to the hard drive & then with the side open of my computer he used my connections for the internal hard drive to see if it was spinning.

Praxeas · #23 03-04-2010, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ron

Actually, I had a friend bring over his lap top & he had a cable with a connector
to connect to the hard drive & then with the side open of my computer he used my connections for the internal hard drive to see if it was spinning.

make sure the hard drive cable is securely plugged in as well as the power cable both on the hard drive and on the main board (ground yourself)

pelathais · #24 03-04-2010, 07:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ron

Ahhhhhhhh, the computer froze & I rebooted the computer & now that's all it wants to do is reboot---continuously!
Yup, I probably have a virus in my BIOS!

I dug out kids old Gateway computer, it's about 10 years old!

Viruses!!!!!

May not be a virus in the BIOS - usually after an epic adventure such as this, what I've seen is that the antivirus programs have changed a BIOS setting when they yanked stuff out, changed something in Boot.ini - or most likely there's some sort of link in the Registry hive that now has its object deleted because that object was infected.

Booting from your OS CDs as RW suggested will bring you back to happiness. You can experiment. Boot and try to run the Windows "Repair an Existing Windows Partition" ... or if you're just tired of it all, just do a clean install and acknowledge the "Formating this Partition" warning.

Ron · #25 03-04-2010, 10:45 PM

Welllllll, I tried to boot from CD/Rom with an XP Disc & it won't work.
It says, boot disc failure, please insert disc & press enter.

Then I found the system recovery discs & it starts to load up & the screen comes up with an error message that it can't run.

I have started to run with the recovery program in the protected sector on the hard drive & it looks like it will work, it will reformat my hard drive though, which is a high cost.

What is a smart short test failure error code HD 521-2W that I get under diagnostics?

pelathais · #26 03-04-2010, 11:39 PM

If you're getting SMART failures then the Hard Drive is toasty. Time for new toys. Sorry.

You can try running the longer and more thourough test... but you'd be better off with a new HDD.

pelathais · #27 03-04-2010, 11:42 PM

SMART is an industry wide standard for testing Hard Drives and reporting on predicted failures. With a small software package from the HDD manufactuers you can actually read the date and time when the Hard Drive is predicted to fail. Of course it does end up being something of a moving target, but for those with large server farms and huge libraries it is helpful.