Repeatedly losing all my data (and patience!)

Hi all

I have a major problem with my PC which I have spent ages trying to fix. I think it may be virus related, but could only think of posting it here. I'm not very technically minded so have tried to include as much information as possible, as I'm not sure if it might be relevant...Please bear with me!

Bit of background information:

Sony Vaio Pentium 4 2.6GHz running Windows XP Home Service Pack 1.

Ok, it all seemed to start last summer when I noticed I had a number of trojan downloader viruses on my PC. I tried using various anti-virus progs to get rid of them, including running in safe mode, turning off system restore, etc. but nothing worked. However, the system itself seemed to run fine, except it was extremely slow, so decided to just not use it full stop.

At the beginning of this year, deciding to give it another go, I took the PC tower round to my dad's who backed up the data onto his Mac. When I got it home, the PC prompted me for the Sony recovery/boot disk (the first time it had ever done this). I decided to use the disk and wipe everything from the two hard drive partitions and restore factory settings (more or less the only option given to me). I did this and the computer worked fine for about a day. It then decided to switch itself off and when it did, guess what??!! I was prompted for the boot/recovery disk again!

This happened a number of times, although I was running virus scans trying both Kaspersky and Zonelabs, but nothing appeared. After about 3 more attempts, the PC seemed to be fine so I continued to use it.

A month later, I turned Windows firewall off for about 5 mins (big mistake) as suddenly Kaspersky warned me that a system file (can't remember the exact one) had been infected with a trojan. It asked me whether I wanted to skip this warning or delete the file, which was recommended, so I reluctantly did. A few days later, the PC decides to suddenly turn itself off and when I turned it back on, I was greeted with the familiar boot/recovery disk prompt AGAIN!!

I don't know if Kaspersky deleted a system file that was absolutely essential for Windows to run?? Also, I was wary about using the delete option because I didn't think removing viruses was a simple as going into the directory and deleting it??? (correct me if I'm wrong..)

Anyway, I gave it yet another go and used the recovery disk, I did the usual virus scans using Zonelabs instead but got the all clear. A couple of days ago, Zonelabs came up with the warning that a few infected objects were in my temporary internet files folder, so I just deleted these straight away. There were no apparent probs with the PC until today when my electrics all tripped (full of bad luck, me!) and the PC turned off. When I went to turn it back on, lo and behold, the damn thing is asking for the boot/recovery disk again and I've lost all my data!!!

Can anyone help with this at all??? I'm beginning to really hate computers and I only bought this one 18 months ago. My dad did mention something about trying to get into some menu when the system reboots but I pressed just about every key and got into just about all of them, except the one he was talking about. I think he was saying something about reformatting the disk and rebooting not being the same thing and that I wasn't doing it right!

I'm holding off installing anything at the moment and just keeping my internet connection on so I can see if anyone can assist.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Louise

 

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

try a repair install ... open the link and scroll down a page ... it won't delete any files(but you will have to update again and some of your apps may not work anymore and have to be reinstalled) but make the OS bootable again .. assuming nothing is wrong with the hardware

 

well, in reading all of this, was your antivirus current? what about all of your windows updates when you reinstalled? if it were me, i'd format the h/d (delete all partitions, and os), reinstall the os, install antivirus/antispy software (do all updates) as well as a firewall if you have dsl or cable. do all of your windows updates, and see what happens. - sos

i'm guessing your dad is talking about getting into safe mode (F8 key), during reboot. you could try and fix it, but if i was in your shoes i'd start from scratch.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407 <-- spyware thread (i'd install ad-aware se, vx2 plugin, ccleaner, spyware blaster, spybot s&d (and dso fix).

http://toolbar.yahoo.com/ <-- i'd also install a popup blocker (if you use ie). it's a decent antispy scanner also

 

I beleive your problem is not any virus.
Pop in the windows xp cd and install from scratch,dont use boot/recover disk.
I am quite sure this will fix it.

 

Thank you all for your advice.

Sosaman - all the anti virus updates were current and I was using SpyBot and Adaware when the problems were occuring. I can't understand why the PC would run ok for a while and then suddenly have problems again?

I forgot to mention that the PC restarts ok, but whenever it's turned off or shut down, it prompts me for the boot disk when I start up.

I don't think I have a Windows CD - everything seems to be on this recovery disk - Windows, software, etc. Therefore, I couldn't try the MichaelStevenTech Windows repair.

I also remembered what menu my dad was talking about - the BIOS menu. Still haven't figured out how to get into it though!

 

iirc you hit the F2 key at the sony splash screen ... although it should tell you which key to hit at the splash screen .. but I'm not too sure what good the BIOS would do you in this situation

if you could borrow a friends XP Home disk you might be able to do a repair install ... then saving your files to a CD, then using your recovery disks to reload your copy of windows

 

Since you have repeatedly used the recovery cd and failed,
my advice to you is get a new recovery cd from sony vaio if that is possible.

 

Or does the boot recovery cd need you to enable the BIOS to boot from cd.
Is that what your DAD told you.Maybe he wants you to reformat the drive and maybe the bootrecovery cd you pop in never really was used because the bios setting is not boot from cd.

I am just guessing.