Possible Hardware Problem... Honestly, I don't know.

A few weeks ago, My windows fell into hibernate and would not come out. I hard booted the computer and then windows wouldn't boot. It stuck on the windows load screen forever, until I hard booted it again. I'd read that in this situation the course of action is to try and repair the Windows installation, but that failed, so I reinstalled Windows. This worked for one boot, but when I restarted the computer it failed to load once again. I then installed Windows onto my OTHER hard drive, which worked once as well, never to work again. I'm thinking it's my original hard drive screwing things up because it's over a year old, so I removed it and tried it that way for a bit. This seemed to work well, so I reconnected the old HDD so that the NEW one would boot first and the old one would be the slave. This worked great for like a week. Now I can't boot windows from either drive. It stays on the load screen and never loads. I am able to boot Ubuntu from a CD which is how I connect to the internet. The computer also reads my other disk drive and the USB (There is no floppy). I can't figure out what the problem is. I've try detaching the old HDD again and no luck. I've downloaded the Ultimate Boot CD and run Memtest86 and the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics Quick Check (the HDDs are Western Digital, the old one is 80GB and the new one is 160 GB SATA.) These checks revealed no problems. What else can I do? Is there anything else on the UBCD that I should try? I am at the end of my rope! Please help!

 

From the sounds of it I would possible suggest a Malware infection, reasoning is that it operated for awhile in differing configs and then had the same symptoms, the other thought could be a faulty PSU (Thats an easy swap)


Dang almost forgot WELCOME TO MAJOR GEEKS

 

i'm dumb as hell... what's PSU?

 

No your not, P power S supply U unit, its the box that supplies the power to the rest of your computer, usually can be removed by taking out a few screws once the Computer case is opened.

 

okay, so is there a way to check the drive for malware without being able to access it? probably not i'd guess. and if it were the PSU, would the rest of my computer still work? because it does.

 

Oh ...and stay off the shrooms until we're done (LOL).

Thats funny, Good one. lmao. ed

 

okay... during this whole crashing of the system, there were some files on my OLD HDD that I backed up. After I was sure the system was stable, I put the files onto my NEW HDD, which was right before the final terrible thing that compelled this post. This leads me to believe that maybe there was malware somewhere that I accidentally spread to both Hard drives to cause them to malfunction. So I formatted the OLD one, detached the new one, and have installed windows to the original HDD. So now I am running only the older 80 GB HDD. Windows has actually started, which is the farthest it's gotten since it totally crapped out the other day. I've installed ONLY the Intel Chipset Driver, and the SMC2208 USB to Ethernet converter driver (which is required to use the internet) at this point. But I'll be finding the other drivers that I need in the meantime. Anyone know how I can retrieve the files from my other hard drive (the ones that I know are safe, mainly my music), so that I can just format the other hard drive, worry free, and start anew? Is that a good idea, or no? Also, how can I prevent this from happening again?

 

Hook up the new hard drive as slave, do a scan of the folders you want to keep, before you open them. ed

 

Glad to hear that things are getting better Trip, if you install the new HD as a slave you should be able to do a scan on it with any of the good Malware scanners, then I would go online and get it scanned once again to make certain. Then you can start to transfer unconfigged files, all the files configged to your OS are another matter. ONE WORD OF CAUTION:- some nasties will migrate from one HD to the other, so you might want to check with the good folks in the Malware Thread first, they also have a "Sticky" on how to stay Malware free follow it exactly and you should come out "Tripping"

Oh and hey got any of those shrooms to spare, we want to put them in TimW's morning porridge

Dang got "Tunered" again

 

Damn you guys are super fast. That's awesome. I appreciate it . I was sure I was doomed.

I just hope that was the problem... I will let you all know how things go!!

 

Ok... It's happened again. I installed some drivers and updates and was told to restart. When I restarted I got stuck on the windows load screen... again. Maybe the old drive is failing AND the new drive has malware??! What are the chances of that..... anyway, anmore suggestions you guys might have? I'm going to try the unplugging the ram and DVD drives like TimW said, but then I'm sleeping. I'll post back if any changes tonight.

 

its your drivers, my guess is the mobo is finally going bad, i suggest you replace the motherboard

 

... Windows loaded again!! yay! I just found that one of my ram sticks was loose. I dunno if it's what caused the problem, or if it was a result of me trying to fix the problem, but time will tell. I'm going to see how she runs over the next few days. Thanks so much guys.

 

Yea that'll do it, ones gotta wonder how long the Ram Stick was loose, and were still awaiting the shrooms to put in TimW's porridge

 

man if I had some I'd give you guys ALL of em. She seems to be doing ok now, I think I took the ram stick out a while back to see what kind it was because I was thinking about shopping for more and I guess I just didn't put it back in right. I could kick myself.

 

Okay will let you Glad its working trip_n_shrooms