Could a Virus Do this??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dan
  • Start date Start date
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Dan

I have a customer whom has a desktop with windows xp pro SP2. They have a
virus scanner installed as well. Yesterday they called me and said that the
computer rebooted by itself and stopped at the POST where it said Error
booting operating system. I shutdown the system and rebooted it and same
thing. Then i take out the drive and put it as a slave on another xp machine
and when i booted the computer up the xp check disk came up and found alot
of orphaned files and when it was completed with the scan it said 0 bad
sectors. I ran a seagate utility to scan the drive for bad sectors and it
didnt find any. I put the drive back in the original computer and boot with
an xp disk to boot into recovery mode and run chkdsk /p and it say that
there are unrecoverable errors. Any suggestions on what could of caused
this? Is there any way to find out what caused this. The customer wants to
know and they think that someone got in there network and did this. I dont
belive that is possible.


thanks
 
Dan wrote:
> I have a customer whom has a desktop with windows xp pro SP2. They have a
> virus scanner installed as well. Yesterday they called me and said that the
> computer rebooted by itself and stopped at the POST where it said Error
> booting operating system. I shutdown the system and rebooted it and same
> thing. Then i take out the drive and put it as a slave on another xp machine
> and when i booted the computer up the xp check disk came up and found alot
> of orphaned files and when it was completed with the scan it said 0 bad
> sectors. I ran a seagate utility to scan the drive for bad sectors and it
> didnt find any. I put the drive back in the original computer and boot with
> an xp disk to boot into recovery mode and run chkdsk /p and it say that
> there are unrecoverable errors. Any suggestions on what could of caused
> this? Is there any way to find out what caused this. The customer wants to
> know and they think that someone got in there network and did this. I dont
> belive that is possible.

It is extremely unlikely that this is a software problem (Windows,
viruses, etc.). If the hard drive tested good in your machine, then your
customer's computer has other hardware failures - possibly the
motherboard, the processor, or even the power supply.

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
Dan wrote:
> I have a customer whom has a desktop with windows xp pro SP2. They have a

(snip multipost)

Asked and answered in the other newsgroup to which you posted. Please
don't multipost; it makes more work for everyone and will get you *less*
help, not more. See this for why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting

If you have forgotten where you posted or can't find your post, use
Google Groups Advanced Search and search for your name.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
Dan wrote:
> I have a customer whom has a desktop with windows xp pro SP2. They have a
> virus scanner installed as well. Yesterday they called me and said that the
> computer rebooted by itself and stopped at the POST where it said Error
> booting operating system. I shutdown the system and rebooted it and same
> thing. Then i take out the drive and put it as a slave on another xp machine
> and when i booted the computer up the xp check disk came up and found alot
> of orphaned files and when it was completed with the scan it said 0 bad
> sectors. I ran a seagate utility to scan the drive for bad sectors and it
> didnt find any. I put the drive back in the original computer and boot with
> an xp disk to boot into recovery mode and run chkdsk /p and it say that
> there are unrecoverable errors. Any suggestions on what could of caused
> this? Is there any way to find out what caused this. The customer wants to
> know and they think that someone got in there network and did this. I dont
> belive that is possible.
>
>
> thanks
>
>

My apologies for not realizing that you had crossposted this and not
multiposted. My answer to you had not as yet shown up.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
I ran a mem test using the software you recommended and memory tested fine.
Could the motherboard being bad cause the files in the drive to be all
messed up?



"Malke" <notreally@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:%23r5iFJNIIHA.5684@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> Dan wrote:
>> I have a customer whom has a desktop with windows xp pro SP2. They have a
>> virus scanner installed as well. Yesterday they called me and said that
>> the computer rebooted by itself and stopped at the POST where it said
>> Error booting operating system. I shutdown the system and rebooted it and
>> same thing. Then i take out the drive and put it as a slave on another xp
>> machine and when i booted the computer up the xp check disk came up and
>> found alot of orphaned files and when it was completed with the scan it
>> said 0 bad sectors. I ran a seagate utility to scan the drive for bad
>> sectors and it didnt find any. I put the drive back in the original
>> computer and boot with an xp disk to boot into recovery mode and run
>> chkdsk /p and it say that there are unrecoverable errors. Any suggestions
>> on what could of caused this? Is there any way to find out what caused
>> this. The customer wants to know and they think that someone got in there
>> network and did this. I dont belive that is possible.
>>
>>
>> thanks
>
> My apologies for not realizing that you had crossposted this and not
> multiposted. My answer to you had not as yet shown up.
>
>
> Malke
> --
> Elephant Boy Computers
> www.elephantboycomputers.com
> "Don't Panic!"
> MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
Dan wrote:
> I ran a mem test using the software you recommended and memory tested fine.
> Could the motherboard being bad cause the files in the drive to be all
> messed up?

Yes, or the processor, or the power supply, or possibly the drive really
is bad. When you tested with Seagate's SeaTools Desktop, did you do a
thorough test or just the 90-second one? The thorough test is recommended.


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
i did all three tests. All passed.


"Malke" <notreally@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
news:O5WIMaOIIHA.1208@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
> Dan wrote:
>> I ran a mem test using the software you recommended and memory tested
>> fine.
>> Could the motherboard being bad cause the files in the drive to be all
>> messed up?
>
> Yes, or the processor, or the power supply, or possibly the drive really
> is bad. When you tested with Seagate's SeaTools Desktop, did you do a
> thorough test or just the 90-second one? The thorough test is recommended.
>
>
> Malke
> --
> Elephant Boy Computers
> www.elephantboycomputers.com
> "Don't Panic!"
> MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
Dan wrote:
> i did all three tests. All passed.
>
>
> "Malke" <notreally@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
> news:O5WIMaOIIHA.1208@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> Dan wrote:
>>> I ran a mem test using the software you recommended and memory tested
>>> fine.
>>> Could the motherboard being bad cause the files in the drive to be all
>>> messed up?
>> Yes, or the processor, or the power supply, or possibly the drive really
>> is bad. When you tested with Seagate's SeaTools Desktop, did you do a
>> thorough test or just the 90-second one? The thorough test is recommended.

Well, there is no way I can give you a definitive answer about a machine
I can't see. I've answered your question; i.e., that it is very unlikely
that a virus did this. Your friend should take his machine to a
professional computer repair shop (not a BigComputerStore/GeekSquad type
of place) or, if you are his computer tech you'll need to figure out
what is going on with his machine by troubleshooting on-site. This isn't
something that can be figured out in a newsgroup.

Good luck,


Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
 
I have seen an iffy pwr supply cause this type of problem

"Dan" <anonymous@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uTml7oOIIHA.2268@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
>i did all three tests. All passed.
>
>
> "Malke" <notreally@invalid.invalid> wrote in message
> news:O5WIMaOIIHA.1208@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>> Dan wrote:
>>> I ran a mem test using the software you recommended and memory tested
>>> fine.
>>> Could the motherboard being bad cause the files in the drive to be all
>>> messed up?
>>
>> Yes, or the processor, or the power supply, or possibly the drive really
>> is bad. When you tested with Seagate's SeaTools Desktop, did you do a
>> thorough test or just the 90-second one? The thorough test is
>> recommended.
>>
>>
>> Malke
>> --
>> Elephant Boy Computers
>> www.elephantboycomputers.com
>> "Don't Panic!"
>> MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User
>
>
 

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