Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Computer Problem

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Posted by Rachel Craven (Member # 1016) on 12-14-2007, 01:10 AM:

I'm going to be as specific as I can at the present moment as I am not next to his computer, just trying to get an idea of what is wrong...

My husband was running Windows XP, we think he probably got a virus because 107 IE window's popped up (ya think?)... the computer froze, he turned it off and when turned back on it WILL go into the first startup screen but then the screen goes blank and the internal speaker starts beeping and it is stuck that way... Did that fry the Hard Drive or might it be something else?

Posted by Paul Van Dusen (Member # 3640) on 12-14-2007, 02:10 AM:

Exactly how many beeps? Count them and do a search for the beep codes for his motherboard. The beeps will tell you exactly what system is wrong. Given that your getting to the start up screen that rules out the video card. If it was the hard drive it wouldn't get past the CMOS boot. It could be a hard drive crash, or possibly some other system on the board itself.

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-14-2007, 02:27 AM:

virus prob wiped or embedded itself in the boot sector record on the HDD. One of the more common viruses that likes to destroy that record.

Hope that an FDISK/format and reinstall can resurrect the HDD.

(That is where you take your XP install disc, push DEL, F2, F12 or Ctrl/S on startup to get into your BIOS to change 1st boot from HD to CdRom, close Bios, restart and let the install CD take over the system to begin again. Unfort all the data on the HD is wiped clean...)

Dang, that's sad when that happens .... sorry on that one -Monte

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-14-2007, 05:25 AM:

If it gets as far as the first Windows screen (the one that says 'Windows XP' with the logo, I presume), then that suggests that the boot sector of the HDD is OK: it's reading the boot record, starting to load Windows and then running aground at some point during that process. I still agree that a virus is a likely culrpit, though.

Will Windows start in safe mode (press F8 during the boot sequence and then select 'start in safe mode' from the menu)? If so, that might enable you to pull any vital documents off onto a USB drive or something (but remember to virus-scan them on another machine before doing ANYTHING else with them); but I agree with Monte in that this is looking ominously like a reinstall Windows job.

If you end up having to do that, then I'd suggest partitioning your HDD into two volumes: C: (System) and D: (Data). Unless you're going to be installing some seriously big software, e.g. graphics-intensive games, 30gb should be more than you'll ever need for the system volume. When all is installed, configure My Documents to point to a folder on D:. That way, if your Windows installation gets corrupted again and you end up having to reinstall, you can just overwrite the C: partition and leave your data alone. You'll still have to virus-scan the contents of D:, though, and of course this won't protect you against physical failure of the hard drive.

Posted by Chris Slycord (Member # 4239) on 12-14-2007, 09:28 AM:

There's also the option of downloading a bootable virus-scanning CD. If you can't get into windows because you've got a virus the whole thing runs off the CD then will mount the drive and scan it for you.

Just search for [virus bootable CD] in google and you'll find plenty of cds ready to burn.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 12-14-2007, 12:26 PM:

Better yet: remove the disk from the bad machine and install it in a known-good machine. You can then scan the corrupted disk and also copy off whatever data is on the bad disk that you haven't backed up yet (you _do_ make regular backups, right?). This would be my first step if there's anything on the disk that is worth saving.

Did you have an NTFS or FAT32 filesystem on the bad disk? If another Windows box can't read it (indicates damaged/failed disk or corrupted filesystem), I have had fantastic luck reading corrupted NTFS volumes by booting off of a Knoppix (Linux distribution on a bootable CD) disk and mounting the NTFS filesystem (read-only).

Before doing a reformat/reinstall, it's definitely worth a try to see if you can boot into safe mode or the recovery console (you _did_ install the recovery console, right?).

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-14-2007, 03:33 PM:

Great idea!

If you're looking at a suspect Windows partition through a computer running Linux, there's absolutely no danger of inadvertently running a virus program and making any virus-related problem worse. I've got Windows and Ubuntu set up for dual-booting on my laptop (running from separately partitioned NTFS and ext3 volumes on the same HDD), and use the latter for web browsing/email checks away from home as an insurance policy against spyware.

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 12-14-2007, 07:45 PM:

I've learned over the years that its best to have at least two hard drives in your puter... one for the OS to reside on and another for storing all your files, photos... and other gobbildygook. You could also partition your present drive and place the OS on one of the partitions.... but this is still not as safe as a seperate drive. This way if the OS becomes infected then the files stay out of the virus's direct path. Hard drives are cheap these days and you only need the smallest one you can find for the OS.

Since I shoot alot of 30 mb+ digital RAW files I'm in the process of setting up a seperate home server mainly for storage, a Supermicro 6024 and it'll have a Raid 5 system on board for storage. I can loose any of the 4 drives and not loose data. Slap in a replacement drive and re-stripe the raid array and not loose a picture.

Mark

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 12-14-2007, 09:11 PM:

quote: Monte L Fullmer
Hope that an FDISK/format and reinstall can resurrect the HDD.

(That is where you take your XP install disc, push DEL, F2, F12 or Ctrl/S on startup to get into your BIOS to change 1st boot from HD to CdRom, close Bios, restart and let the install CD take over the system to begin again. Unfort all the data on the HD is wiped clean...)

Don't do that for a boot sector virus (not that I'm saying you actually have a boot sector virus.

Just run FIXMBR from the recovery console and keep all your data.

quote: Scott Norwood

(you _did_ install the recovery console, right?).

If you didn't, just boot into it from the OS install CD.

Posted by Rachel Craven (Member # 1016) on 12-15-2007, 10:21 AM:

Well, the good and odd news is that we just let the computer sit there for a couple of days while we waited for a friend that knows what hes doing to come over to look at it, of course it started right up for him... (just like a car when you bring it to the shop!)

Bascially he just ran AVG and it came up with a bunch of stuff which we 'hopefully' were able to get rid of. As of now it seems to be back up and running... and we were ready to have to do a complete re-install. *Crossing my fingers*

Posted by Bobby Henderson (Member # 840) on 12-15-2007, 11:32 AM:

Take this golden opportunity to back up any data (photos, documents, etc.) you want to keep that is stored on that machine. I don't know for sure what could be wrong with your computer. But any serious glitch like that just screams for a data backup.

Like Mark said, hard discs are cheap. Even the external ones. The price per gigabyte has become so inexpensive that optical discs are now starting to fall out of favor. You can copy data from stack upon stack of CD-Rs, music CDs, etc. and fit it all inside a $99 hard disc. It's a decent way to fight clutter.