Computer Help

8/4/2012 | raybbr

[raybbr]

Sigh!

I have an older Toshiba laptop running W7. The other day my wife called me at work to tell me the Windows Repair program came up. It was too late to tell her to shut it down.

Now, every boot comes up with the repair screen. I cannot even boot into Safe modes or command prompt.

I downloaded and ran the AVG bootable CD with the anti-virus program on it. It came back negative.

I now have the hard drive plugged into my desktop via a USB adapter and have tried several times to scan it with Malwarebytes. I suspect a rootkit because a couple of User folders come up as empty while others are okay. I have noticed this before with a rootkit.

What I would like to do is run TDSSKiller from my PC on the hard drive plugged into the USB port.

It tried running chkdsk on it. It came back with errors and would not continue. (I did not log the errors).

I could be the hard drive is bad but I have not received any errors from Windows while using it over the last few weeks. There is very little info on it that I need except for some files as my wife and sons use it.

Thanks in advance for the help.

I will be in and out today so I may not reply quickly to suggestions.

[raybbr]

Looking forward to the many posts regarding logging in, my sister the moose, the cheese eating dogs, aliens and, of course, the shower scene in "Psycho".

[norwaypinesavage]

I had a similar problem, in a similar system, and it actually was a failed hard drive. Unfortunately, it sometimes happens. If it is failed, you may still be able to install it as a second drive, or as a usb drive, in another computer and recover some of the files.

[Gay State Conservative]

I'm a rank amateur...with the emphasis on “rank”...when it comes to PC’s but I have succeeded,twice,in retrieving vital files from the hard drive of a relative’s dead computer (turns out to have been a niece both times).It sounds like you'd know how to do that as well and if so perhaps an imperfect solution for you would be to retrieve your important files,buy a new HD and reinstall your applications Office,etc,etc.

[wrench]

I just went through this. Get a new hard drive and start over. You can get a Bootable Linux cd (just download Knoppix and burn ISO image to a CD)that will run from the cd, allowing you to access the broken HD and transfer your needed files to a thumb drive.

I went with a full Linux install and don’t miss the Win systems at all.

[pepsionice]

I would offer one other bit of advice. The new HD is necessary, but if this is a laptop over five years old...I’d just go and find myself a decent $500 laptop and start fresh...and buy the small $20 cabling kit to hook up the old HD via USB to the new laptop, and try to recover my data that way. In any fashion...your old HD is finished at the end of this episode.

[wrench]

Good advice. Look for laptops to get real cheap end of summer/fall as the new version of Windows is due out shortly.

A new battery, hard drive and memory upgrade for a 5 year old laptop puts you at 50% of the cost of a new one.

[raybbr]

tech help ping

[Svartalfiar]

As a couple people have mentioned, you can try using a bootable usb/cd for knoppiz or ubuntu. But being as how you already took it out and used a usb adapter, you shouldn’t need those to get your files off that you need. Just scan them first, just in case.

Which User folders are empty? I only have one account on my computer, but ‘Public’ and ‘Default’ are still user accounts, both with empty folders in ‘em.

After getting that stuff off, you can try reformatting the hard drive, see if it actually was a virus of some sort or if it failed.

[raybbr]

A new battery, hard drive and memory upgrade for a 5 year old laptop puts you at 50% of the cost of a new one.

Not really. I have a hard drive from a previous dead laptop. I could use it. I just would like to find out what's wrong with this one...

[TomGuy]

Tigerdirect is running a special on laptops (last 24-hours in progress now).

I have bought several desktop and laptops from them. Their prices are nearly unbeatable.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/campaigns/laptopweek/index.asp

[raybbr]

Two different User folders, (my wife's and another one) scan as empty. Not the sub folders but the entire User folder.

As a couple people have mentioned, you can try using a bootable usb/cd for knoppiz or ubuntu.

Are there utilities I can use to diagnose the disk?

[mrsmith]

Go to the HD manufacturer’s site and download a diagnostic for the HD (or get one by searching). CHKDSK can only do so much.

If it’s OK Toshiba has a recovery partition you can get to by pressing zero when booting.

[mrsmith]

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/support/home.jsp

[miliantnutcase]

Run a chkdsk -r -f
This will repair corruptions in the file system. If this doesn’t work you will need a windows 7 install disk to run the repair console when you boot from the DVD.

[mrsmith]

http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287#toshiba

HDD diagnostics.

[Justa]

Ditto post 2. Damaged hard drive.

Cheap trick: Unplug the HD, give it a shake and put it in the freezer for 2 hours. That could get you a good boot from which you can perform a backup to external device, add a Restore point and clone the drive for re-installation on a new drive.

[TheCipher]

Are there utilities I can use to diagnose the disk?

You can try this :

Seatools for Windows

Instructions

[oh8eleven]

There are Windows 7 Repair uninstall programs available such as How to remove Windows 7 Repair .
Look down the page for different downloads, manual instructions, etc.
I don't know if you can run programs from one PC to another.

[TheCipher]

On the above link, click Downloads.

[UB355]

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline/

Here is another option to look into

Windows Defender Offline can help remove such hard to find malicious and potentially unwanted programs using definitions that recognize threats