Can an Online Scan Cause Temporary Total Operating System Failure?

If you don't have the time to read the details you could skip the details below and just give me advice on these questions:

1. Can an Online Scan Cause Temporary Total Operating System Failure?
2. Can a hard drive have a major failure causing your computer not to be able to boot up and then an hour or two later start working normally again?
3. Can any other piece of hardware (for example, a memory chip) fail causing loss of boot up capability for the computer as a whole, but then that hardware starts to work again normally an hour or two later?

The details>>>

I used to go to forums like this when I was totally incompetent, but stopped after I became much more able to handle the Windows XP system (and on getting all software to work right). But something happened to my computer today that is so bizarre that I thought it necessary to see if anyone has ever heard of this at a tech forum.

I’ll give you the sequence of events:

1. Overnight I ran the Microsoft Windows Live One Care Safety Scanner (which is a free online scan). One interesting thing about this particular scan is that it is technically the most wide ranging scanner you can run with one click. You can have it scan for malware, registry junk and errors, open ports, whether any of your discs need defragment, and probably other stuff I can’t think of at the moment. You can do all this with just one click. The address is: Microsoft Windows LiveOneCare Safety Scanner
So I ran this overnight.

2. When I woke up the results of the scan in summary were that it recommended removal of some registry junk and it recommended a defragment.

3. After checking the results I noticed something that never ever happened before (in over 25,000 hours of computer experience I have). The files in my portable hard drive (which I use as my main data drive and I also have another portable hard drive for back-up) were not showing (and not accessible). On mouseover the drive was still showing the correct gigabytes, but the files themselves were seemingly missing. So as anyone with any experience would do I restarted the computer.

4. The computer would not restart correctly. It booted down normally but then got stuck on the very first screen you always see when you turn the computer on. I call it the “HP Screen”; it’s a blue background screen with the HP icon on it. Normally after about three seconds at this screen you go next to the boot up series of screens. There are three f-key choices at the bottom of the blue screen including boot menu and system restore (but like anyone else I almost never use these). So to emphasize, what happened was that nothing happened: the computer was stuck on the HP screen.

5. I tried four times to generate the boot-up by cutting the power but each time I was stuck on the HP screen indefinitely. I tried each of the three menu items that are at the bottom of the HP screen and none of them worked. Although there were no noises you usually get if a hard drive has failed, I thought sure this was a hard drive failure situation.

6. I went out to start shoveling the bottom of my driveway so that I could go to Walmart and buy a new computer using the phone in the Walmart lobby (or possibly buy one from Walmart itself).

7. I came back in and what I think is some kind of bios screen had appeared. I think one of the menu items on the HP screen had worked after more than an hour! On the bios screen I clicked on the selection for booting up using the usual boot up drive (the one I thought was dead).

8. The computer then did boot up normally! On that first boot up the portable drive (still attached as usual) was not recognized at all, but everything else was working, so already it was clear that the main computer hard drive was working normally. I started to think that the portable hard drive had failed even though it is relatively new.

9. I unplugged the portable, restarted the computer, and plugged in the portable after the main computer booted up in order to start it “hot” thinking this would determine once and for all whether it was the portable that had failed (or whether the USB hub had failed or whether the operating system had failed and would no longer recognize any USB device).

10. But amazingly, everything returned to normal as if nothing totally bizarre had happened! I tested all “critical things” and also have restarted twice and every last thing is completely and totally back to normal!

I talked with a tech at a computer store I go to and much to my amazement he agreed with a theory I threw out: that somehow the Windows Live One Care Safety Scanner temporarily damaged (or changed critical settings if you prefer) on the XP Operating System. (I learned a long time ago that there is really no such thing as a too crazy theory when it comes to computers). Keep in mind though that I never voluntarily had the scanner remove or change anything; I exited the app without having it remove or change anything. So if the scanner caused this it would have to have been in the process of scanning itself and not in any post scan process you authorize it to do. Again, I didn't authorize anything other than the scan itself.

This is sooo bizarre (one of the top three all time bizarre failures in over 25,000 hours of heavy computer use) that I thought I would run this by a forum or two and see what the opinions are on this theory that an online scanner caused a temporary (about 90 minutes to be exact) total operating system failure (in particular, a total loss of boot-up capability).

An alternate theory is that it was a temporary hard drive failure. Another alternate theory (by the tech I spoke with) is that it was a temporary memory chip failure. In general the technician I spoke with thought that it could be a temporary failure of any number of hardware components. But much to my amazement he also agreed with me that it is possible that the online scanner caused the 90 minute total failure of the operating system.

I myself am thinking the scanner actually caused this (and of course I will never run that particular scan again). But on the other hand if anything resembling this happens in the near future it would have to be a hardware that signaled failure here but didn’t completely fail for good.

How am I doing here? Does the scanner theory make any sense or not? Is there such a thing as temporary major hard drive failure followed by total recovery back to normal of that hard drive? What is your opinion as to what probably happened? Is there something else that could be to blame that I have not even thrown out? Thanks for any comments and happy holidays.

 

Hi

The scanner could have indeed caused your trouble. Microsoft and a lot of other software companies have a habit of taking liberties with computers without disclosing everything they do, and this is one of the many reasons why I dislike them thinking they can do that.

Since it recommended a defrag, it's quite possible that it unmounted the drives (without permission, of course), and your computer wasn't able to mount the system drive upon reboot (remember, reboot does NOT equal shutdown/power on). Having the computer off for awhile could have allowed the drives to reset somehow, though I can't figure out exactly what process could have happened there.

The other possibility is it's something unrelated to the scanner. A fan or heatsink could be clogged with dust that normally doesn't generate enough heat to be noticed, but running overnight with computer activity caused an overheating issue, and allowing the computer to be off and cool down let it start up without issue. This could also explain why the USB drive wasn't recognized upon the initial successful boot... data could have been corrupted somehow in the shutdown process.

My theories aside, I've seen strange things happen with computers as well, and always love a good story.

The worst experience I had was a hard drive with malware outside of the partition... the only "format" that cleared it out (which I only realized after trying to format with Windows install disks, partition software bootable disks, etc.) was a complete low-level format.

I've also had a motherboard do strange things, such as: 1) one keyboard and mouse won't work that's been working on the computer for years, but a different keyboard and mouse suddenly work fine (and the original keyboard/mouse work fine on other computers), 2) too many things plugged into USB (a technology that supports up to 256 devices at a time) would cause none of them to work properly, 3) it would take several boots to get past the "HP screen" of mine (mine doesn't say HP, but you know what I mean), the screen would display weird characters sometimes, sometimes blocks of colors... but after 5 or 6 power-ons, it would boot like nothing was wrong, ETC.

Then I have mice that won't work on a mouse pad AT ALL, but work fine on a wood desk top.

The list goes on.

 

All the evidence says that you nailed it: you have exactly determined what exactly happened.

The culprit was apparently the tune-up component of the Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner. According to the documentation, the tune-up component of the scanner (one of three components) is just to tell you whether you should do a defragment or not. NEVER use the tune-up component of the Microsoft Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner.

Because if you use it you risk getting a non-bootable computer in the bargain. You can find out whether a defrag is recommended from Windows itself (control panel etc). I very much doubt that the the Windows Op Sys defragment app can lead to an unbootable computer, but after what happened today I wouldn't bet the ranch on that.

Thanks very much and happy holidays to you.

 

If you were stuck on the boot screen (HP screen) the whole time that indicates that the PC was having trouble reading the hardware. It could have been the HD as mcsmc said. Or as he also mentioned it could have been the USB drives that were tripping things up. Since they didn't appear normally even when you got into Windows and USB ports are troublesome, I would think they could have been the culprit. I'm curious if unplugging the USBs and restarting would have sped things up.

Either way the lag on the HP screen had nothing to do with Windows OS. It was a problem with BIOS not being able to recognize some piece of hardware. That is not to say that the scanning program didn't do something funny to the USB drives it most likely id do something that caused the problem.

 

I've never seen USB devices bother a boot sequence -- only RAM, HDD, video card, etc. i.e. internal components.

To OP: Windows Defrag utility is NOT invasive whatsoever, and won't mess anything up. I've used it in the past more than once without issue... ALL it does is defrag. I would stay away from one click software though, since that one click can get you a few unwanted bonuses apparently.:-D

 

to sach2

I have a 120GB external drive that is formatted as FAT32.
It is a USB drive.
If plugged in while the PC is booting, I always get a message that that one drive needs to be scanned.
If I don't hit any key within a few seconds, it starts scanning automatically.
All before Windows will open.

 

Hi,
I understand but that would be at the beginning of Windows. Isn't it Windows pre-GUI that is saying it found errors on a disk and it needs to be checked? The OP never got past the HP splash screen that is just a pretty picture to make the computer look friendlier during POST. When after an hour the computer left the HP screen he was looking at a boot menu which is still part of POST.

I've had a bootable flash stick randomly hang POST with a message "remove media and retry". Removing the USB, shutting down, reinserting the USB and rebooting clears the error. I can then boot from USB or HD etc.

I was just saying I believe of all the available pieces of hardware I would put my money on the USB drive hanging POST.

 

I have had the older version of Microsoft scanner affect one of my previous computer,(that one would run and do what it wanted, and you could not stop it ) in a similar way, so I am not a lover of that Microsoft tool. I do use other Microsoft tools ,mostly to see if they work, when I want to know if they do, or, even just to make an archived note about them.
I do keep Advanced Windows Care, as a scanner, and have often suggested to others to use it, but only the one click basic scan, as this , I find, is very efficient, and will offer to make a restore point on first run. Those of us who play about with these things know what damage a one click service program can do. I don't recommend the professional version to anyone not conversant enough with these tools, as that is when they can, and often do mess up your system. I have the professional version, and if I have a niggle on my machine, I will run it, and use all the tools that I think will seek and mend- but rarely. I tend to use its registry repair, and other cleaner tools (it will also run sfc /scannow)- but I read all through the faults it thinks it finds, and untick any I believe are not what it thinks, but the one -click on that software, free version, works very well.
I always believe you should have the option to think for yourself with these things, as well as looking at advised repairs. I have not, and will not try the latest Microsoft scanner, unless I have an old laptop that I can try it on, before re-installing the software.
I have seen a computer refuse to start, or, delay for some time (mind you, I can only remember about half an hour, at the most for some of the reasons already discussed- leaving a usb stick in, leaving a cd in, and on one pc, having a usb hard drive connected, and YES, after those dodgy early updates that cause havoc, until Microsoft sends the repairing update, after you have had to use system restore (and if you could use system restore).
Microsoft are still not perfect, and I suppose they have to try their own "program" for anything, so as not to let others do it, first, or, even just to say "Oh we've got one of those , here "
I have tried fixit tools, though , and really think they have something in the microsoft fixit tool.
Sorry about the rambling on- I got quite carried away there.:-D