Is it a Virus, Crashed HD or Something Else?

Hello Major Geek Friends,

I've got a problem and I need help.

I run Win 7 on a a Gateway tower - 8GB, 1TB. I was a good little geek and made all the backup CDs when it was new in March 2012, including the recovery disks, and the system restore disks of which I have about 20 all together - the entire process took me 2 days, but I wanted to give myself all the advantages and protection in my new machine that I could. I use a lot of Adobe and Win Office programs, and I keep the machine clean as I can. I have only used about half of my storage space and normally things run fast.

I use Malwarebytes and have the upgraded version w serial number. I also have the free version of SuperAntiSpyware, which has been running on schedule. I run CC Cleaner every few months, and use the Windows defender program and firewall as well. I thought I was protected, so I am not sure if I have a virus or a crash. Here is what happened - I will try to be brief yet give you whatever seems important.

A month ago I had a problem booting up the machine and a techie friend fixed it for me - When I turned it on, the screen read Install Book Up Disk or drive and press any key to restart - and was stuck there - it would not start windows and I couldn't get past that. This friend had stored my tower for me in his shop for a few months, and it came back a week later working fine. He said it was No Big Deal and I thought all was good.

It was all working fine, until last week, about Jan 29 2015, Windows did an update and I thought “no big deal, it does this automatically all the time”. The following day after I had rebooted the machine, Something was weird, it seemed slower. I tried removing the two updates it installed the night before but I couldn't get rid of them. I then tried to do a system restore but that failed. Thinking I would figure out how to undo the updates later when I could spend more time - it felt like a bigger time commitment than I wanted to make right then, and they were just updates anyhow, I thought I had time and was safe.

So then I listened to some classical music on YouTube, and watched a movie called Zeitgeist from 2007 on YT also.

Now, I noticed a strange thing about the movie: The audio was WAY out of sync – I thought Hmmm…weirdness, but it was an old copy and was on YT, so I thought – again – no big deal. It's a conspiracy theory movie, so I thought I was just being paranoid.

THEN, about an hour after the movie ended, my computer restarted itself – and it hasn’t worked since. It just simply announced Windows is restarting, and I watched it flicker thru a few different screens - one of which was BLUE, another one was grey with the same white text I was stuck in before saying to reboot insert disk and hit any key, then that one went away and another one I didn't get to read came up - I was watching this from about 12 feet away, and it was like a little slide show - there were a few (4 or 5 different ones) and I thought "Naw, one of the programs I had running just did something weird, and I should restart the machine and it would be fine when it came back up.

I turned it off, waited a bit and restarted the machine, I knew immediately something was Really Wrong with it. Since then, I am unable to boot windows, and the screen is stuck toggling back and forth on the original screen it had when I gave it to Techie Friend to fix. I've tried my recovery disk but it doesn't respond to the disk I have in the drive, even if I start the machine with the disk in it. I find this especially irritating because I even made the dang disks for this very purpose, have saved them for 3 years and now that I actually NEED them, they aren't working.

So, did I get a Virus in a conspiracy theory movie or classical music on You Tube? The conspiracy movie really takes the cake here - How paranoid have I become? Or, is it really there? Maybe you guys should check it out and see if it’s the video…..

On the other hand, maybe it’s the windows update…??? Or did my hard drive just happen to pick right now to crash? The timing just seems so suspicious to me, and I can't even access my system now at all.

Sorry to be so long but I wanted to give you all the nitty gritty in case it's important. Your reply is much appreciated with many thanks!

 

Hello There,

First let me thank you both for replying SO fast to my distress call! I know you are both busy and I really appreiate your time and expertise.

So I've been at it all day, my OCDs are on a rampage, and I was compelled to conquer this beast! The bottom line is I restored the machine to factory settings and have just been reloading stuff all day. I spent a few hours this am messing around with the disks and finally got the machine booted up, then I thought I could restore the system, but that failed. Then I thought I'd copy my laptop and use an external HDD to give the machine a system image to pull from, but that failed too. Then, somehow miraculously, the machine gave me a box of restoration options. The last resort was restore to factory settings, and it worked!! Praise God, right? At that point I was ready to chuck this thing out the window.

So I guess it was some type of Win corruption or failure? It's been a hassle having to reload everything, but on the other hand it forced me to clean things up a bit as well.

Thank you so much for your help - Having your fast reply waiting for me this morning gave me the inspiration to stick with it and I think now all will be fine.

However, I'm not going to watch any more conspiracy theory movies on YouTube, just because....well, I guess I really AM paranoid! LOL!!

Be Happy and Well to you Each,

Sheila

 

Hello Hello,

I have been meaning to get back here and say Thank you for all your help and input, and somehow weeks turned into months.

I had ISSUES, did a full system restore and after everything was reloaded, the system went down again. At that point I installed a new HD and updated to the new Windows 8 and now things are running very well.

I will make a full image system copy and have an external hd to keep it on in case I need to do this again.

Thanks again for your sage advice!

Be Happy and Well,
Sheila