dead PC and XP Help

[Big Black Stilo]

About 2 months ago my mrs did something silly on my desktop and filled it with viruses. I used symantic to find and get rid of/quarrantine them. It found 4/5 viruses. Spybot Search and Destroy was used and nothing untoward came from that.

Then the computer started to run dog slow, then got slower and slower, but I couldn’t find anything malicous on it. I switched it off, stopped using it and bought a laptop sooner than I was expecting. Since then when on and nothing really running, it has been continously read/writing the hard disc whilst on. Hence it has never been on for more than 10-15 minutes.

Then last night I wanted to put some files off it onto a USB pen drive and it took about 15-20 minutes to boot up, then 10 minutes to open my computer from the double click for me to select the drive then about 5 minutes for the my documents box.

Task manager was showing the pc was running flat out. When accessing the USB drive, every now and then it gave a message stating the filepath could not be found and then the drive showed as empty, wouldn’t eject as was showing in use. Then after a restart the colouring on the screen started flickering to a yellow tint, then went all yellow. The drive issue with the USB pendrive still occurred. Then the machine started to spin each drive in turn, floppy, cd-rw, DVD then stopped, I then went to paste files on the pen drive and it stated, then ceased stating the filepath for the pendrive was incorrect.

At this point I restarted the machine again, got to cmos screen and got PRI SLAVE HDD ERROR press F1 to continue. So I did. Then it wouldn’t boot and asked for a boot disk which I havent got, or the XP disc.

Now it wont do anything. The hard disk wasn’t clicking and there was no disc errors showing before it died. The only thing it was doing was continually read/writing.

Any ideas? About what to do next?

 

[RaiseR]

the best thing to do when there has been a virus is start from the beggining because you are not guaranteed to be uninfected even after scanning (clearly u were still infected) the only thing that you can do now is either repair windows using the boot disc or reinstall windows but u will have no data left on the drive

 

[jip0]

the best thing to do when there has been a virus is start from the beggining because you are not guaranteed to be uninfected even after scanning (clearly u were still infected) the only thing that you can do now is either repair windows using the boot disc or reinstall windows but u will have no data left on the drive

:yeahthat:

sounds liek you got a pretty nasty virus

 

[Big Black Stilo]

hmmm.... got home and its not seeing the hard disk at all now. made a boot disk cd and it didnt even spin the cd drive when looking for it.

however when sat asking for a boot disc, i can hear the hard disk spinning and read/writing constantly.

i think my question is now.... d'ya reckon i can get my files off of it?

 

[RaiseR]

Most probably not im afraid but you could always try a different approach and get it repaired but im not sure if your data will still be on there make a few calls and find out

 

[Big Black Stilo]

going to try my hd in another pc (any volounteers?!!!) and hook it up as an additional HD

theres only about 3gb of files i actually need off it, everything else i couldnt care less about

the pc is too old to spend any money on it repairing it

 

[Hellcat]

If you want data off the old drive be sure not to install a new OS onto it! Once you do that you're almost guaranteed to have corrupted any recoverable data.

Put it aside and if you're going to save the PC buy it a new drive. I'd imagine you can pickup an IDE drive of around 40-60GB for pennies.

 

[Big Black Stilo]

the only problem i have is the lack of an XP disc and i cant find the product code (probably stuck on the disc case)

 

[Hellcat]

Isn't it stuck on the PC?

Either it's time for a new PC and Windows 7 (which is very nice), or find someone who will lend you a key and disc?

 

[SeanW]

Could always try one of the various Linux flavours. Ubuntu is pretty good these days. I'm sure that some one on a Linux forum would be able to ell you how to recover you're old files from a an old HD with Windows on it.

 

[Big Black Stilo]

nope... its not on the case.

I bought a laptop a couple of months back because of how dog **** my pc had become but was going to strip it down and use it for music editing/mixing/recording (and the missus sony walkman as it only just works with XP!)

 

[Ucof]

Right, theres a few options open to you.


1) Take hard drive round to someone's PC and connect it up - just check that the hard drive actually works, can be read and so on. Virus check it first, before anything else. If it is clean, copy files onto a thumbdrive or DVD. After that, run scandisk and tell it to do the in depth scan (on the "Check Disk <disc name>", make sure that both check boxes are ticked). PC will need to reboot and will then scan.

2) Buy yourself a new hard drive and install Linux on it. As said before, Ubuntu is great, free and not nearly as confusing as most people (who have never even looked a Linux box) make out. It is really user friendly and there is a great community of people who help out with problems. www.ubuntu.com I assume? Download a install CD (or order one in the post) and then install away. You will of course need a working PC to do this.

3) Give up and cry into your duvet.


I suggest 3, followed by 1, then 2.

"It found 4/5 viruses." - How do you know there was one it didn't find, if it didn't find it?

"Then after a restart the colouring on the screen started flickering to a yellow tint, then went all yellow." - Oddly enough, colour tints are normally due to faulty cables - does the PC still have the yellow tint?

Just open the box up, make sure all the cables are plugged into the drives ok and load it up.

 

[Big Black Stilo]

back in september symantic found and destroyed 4/5 viruses but it found nothing since.

colour tints, all fine when in CMOS screens just when was windows running

 

[Big Black Stilo]

i might try the linux thing, a mate has a linux that runs off of a CD (or DVD) and we'll see how that goes!

 

[Ucof]

Most Linux distributions let you to boot into the OS from disc if you want to.

Good news is that if there is a virus on the hard drive, it won't be able to do anything to the Linux OS!

 

[Big Black Stilo]

linux seems the way forward

 

[fingers99]

Good news is that if there is a virus on the hard drive, it won't be able to do anything to the Linux OS!

It/they won't be able to do any harm to Linux anyway -- viruses are the price you pay for using a **** poor OS.

Use something like Knoppix, burn it to CD, set the bios on your old box to boot from CD, away you go. But, to my mind, this sounds as much like HD failure as a virus.

 

[Big Black Stilo]

sorry to dig up an old thread, but i have had some time on my hands.

i dismantled the desktop and re-attached everything and all seems operational...except BIOS/CMOS not seeing the HDD.

so i have installed Ubuntu and cant find the HDD and files (was able to test on laptop first to get to grips with it and also recover files on brothers laptop so i know how to use it) and it isnt seeing the HDD, however i can still hear the drive spinning and operating like its read/writing.

any ideas?

 

[NachtDerUntoten]

Is it a SATA or IDE drive? Have you reset the CMOS?

 

[Big Black Stilo]

its IDE