RockmanPM Forums

irgpie · **Reply #625 on:** April 18, 2011, 12:19:57 AM

So I was in the middle of playing a game when my laptop suddenly went to sleep on me. After managing to wake it up, it just went back to sleep again. Fed up, I forced shut-down. When I booted it back on, it kept turning itself off before it even finished loading Windows. At some point or other I also got a BSoD. I think I still have a warranty, and I just backed up most stuff I care about yesterday, so really all I'd like to know is a rough idea of what this might be: Hardware failure, or some sort of virus?

EDIT: A friend said to hit F8 on start up. After doing it twice, everything is working. Weird. Now to run a virus check

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #626 on:** April 18, 2011, 03:40:32 AM

Quote from: ViperAcidZX on April 17, 2011, 06:20:06 PM

I'm not sure if anyone can help me with my problem. Here's the TL:DR version:
Other TL:DR version: http://amethystviper.deviantart.com/journal/39873424/

I installed Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and Avast, while my brother installed AVG, which was after the fiasco. All of the viruses and malware that was in the PC was dealt with already, but my brother's worried about the infection that's in the 1TB external hard drive and I need to know if there's a way to purge any remaining viruses from it.

As a precursor; there is always a risk of infection from a virus even if you have the latest virus definitions. No virus protection is 100% effective. You lower the risk by keeping things up to date, but new viruses are made every day and until analyzed there is no anti-virus solution for it. This procedure always carries a risk, as you are plugging a potentially virus infected file system into your PC. That said, let's continue...

Make sure you have anti-virus, anti-spyware, and anti-adware programs installed and all up to date on the PC you will be using to plug the external harddrive into.

IMPORTANT
Before you plug the external harddrive into the PC, go to your control panel and DISABLE auto play for everything. Some viruses will try to automatically launch via Window's AutoPlay feature.

Next, plug the drive in and wait for it to recognize. DO NOT OPEN THE DRIVE IN THE FILE BROWSER. Then you want to use your anti-virus to do a scan on the external harddrive. Repeat for anti-spyware and anti-adware programs. There is no way to tell what was infected without doing this, and no way to recover files damaged by the virus. Whatever is damaged is damaged, you can only get back what is there to get back. That said, this is your best shot for getting anything back at all.

That's pretty much all there is to it.

Posted on: April 17, 2011, 08:35:41 PM

Quote from: Rien on April 18, 2011, 12:19:57 AM

So I was in the middle of playing a game when my laptop suddenly went to sleep on me. After managing to wake it up, it just went back to sleep again. Fed up, I forced shut-down. When I booted it back on, it kept turning itself off before it even finished loading Windows. At some point or other I also got a BSoD. I think I still have a warranty, and I just backed up most stuff I care about yesterday, so really all I'd like to know is a rough idea of what this might be: Hardware failure, or some sort of virus?

EDIT: A friend said to hit F8 on start up. After doing it twice, everything is working. Weird. Now to run a virus check

Forcing the shut down probably damaged a system file, or caused a configuration file to be cut short. When you used F8, and I assume you selected "Last known good configuration", it restored a previous version of the file you cut short by forcing the shutdown.

Hard to say what caused the laptop to go to sleep on you suddenly though.

Flame · **Reply #627 on:** April 18, 2011, 04:34:28 AM

problem RPM. My laptop was turned off from the power switch, when it went back on, it updated, but now all of a sudden, it isnt able to start windows. it just doesnt boot up. nothing seems to work here. system repair doesnt do [parasitic bomb], my recovery discs only offer to restore factory settings.

Id like to if possible, FIX the problem, or at least recover some of my files before resetting....

my pal thinks I may have corrupted the boot sector somehow.

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #628 on:** April 18, 2011, 02:51:38 PM

Boot sector corruption is possible. What exactly does it do, step by step, from the time you turn it on to when it stops working and shuts off? I'm guessing there is a blue screen somewhere in there, in which case it'll tell you what is wrong. Write down/snap photo/whatever, just get that message and post it here.

Flame · **Reply #629 on:** April 18, 2011, 06:36:07 PM

I turn on from the power button. the Acer screen comes up, with the option to press F2 to go to settings, etc etc. after that, it tries to load, (a loading bar appears and loads) but then goes to a screen that says "windows was unable to start"

And it gives me the option to start Windows Repair, or Start windows normally. Starting windows normally just brings me back to the same screen.

I then press the power button, and it just shuts off, no delay or wait or anything, since it just never booted up windows to begin with.

Ill take pictures later if I can. My friend is gonna lend me his Vista CD to see if it can repair windows somehow. and the same pal from before is gonna see what he can figure out about this [parasitic bomb]. If all is lost, he can at least offer me the ability to access my drive and salvage some files. (Ubuntu or something I think?)

Hiryu · **Reply #630 on:** April 18, 2011, 10:45:21 PM

It does sound like something went wrong with the update that was installed. I'm betting it messed up your system files more than it did with the boot sector, though. Repairing windows would be your best action to take, imo. If that doesn't work, it is probably the boot sector.

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #631 on:** April 19, 2011, 04:44:45 AM

Yikes. That sounds bad.

Reminds me of when WinXP SP3 updates totaled my installation once. Even if you CAN restore your installation, I'd be really inclined to say back everything up and reinstall anyway just to be on the safe side.

Flame · **Reply #632 on:** April 19, 2011, 03:14:36 PM

God damn vista. i swear, im upgrading to 7. I dont care if it would blow my birthday money that i was saving for games, this [parasitic bomb] pissed me off.

Hiryu · **Reply #633 on:** April 19, 2011, 07:56:51 PM

I really don't blame you. 7 is so much more stable than vista.

Mirby · **Reply #634 on:** April 20, 2011, 04:40:39 AM

I'm sticking with mah XP.

Flame · **Reply #635 on:** April 20, 2011, 06:25:59 AM

Quote from: Hiryu on April 19, 2011, 07:56:51 PM

I really don't blame you. 7 is so much more stable than vista.

My dad has it on his laptop. It is so much more enjoyable too.

Waifu · **Reply #636 on:** April 23, 2011, 05:11:52 PM

Can anyone help me to get my computer to read my hard drive?

Hypershell · **Reply #637 on:** May 21, 2011, 03:38:35 PM

FYI, Sakura, the failure of anyone to respond probably has something to do with your lack of detail.

Quote from: Flame on April 20, 2011, 06:25:59 AM

My dad has it on his laptop. It is so much more enjoyable too.

I just got it a few weeks ago (skipped Vista). It's great, but you'd think Windows Update would handle driver downloads for Microsoft's own hardware. It doesn't. My X-Box 360 controller (which I bought for the sole purpose of using as a PC pad) freaked the ever-loving hell out of my USB ports after I unplugged it (I got that constant unknown device connect/disconnect error) until I manually downloaded the driver from their website.

A lot of things can cause that error, I understand, but I figured I'd share my experience just in case.

Waifu · **Reply #638 on:** May 24, 2011, 05:40:23 PM

I manaeged to address the problem of my hard drive to a media test failure and the problem with the drive itself. I tried changing IDE controllers but I still get a PXE-MOF abd PXE-e61. What should I do?

Edit: nevermind I resolved it already.

Posted on: May 21, 2011, 11:19:44 AM

Are there any programs that will allow to repair corrupted files after file recovery? I had managed to recover my files on the computer but some of them I got corrupted on recovery. Is there ay to repair the files if they are NTFS files?

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #639 on:** May 24, 2011, 06:08:10 PM

Unfortunately, last I knew, there aren't really any easy or simple ways to fix a file corruption.

Part of the problem is the manner in which a file becomes corrupted. It boils down to one concept; change. A file can become corrupted for a few reasons, such as;
- there is more data in the file than it should have
- there is less data in the file than it should have
- the file allocation is missing parts or formed incorrectly
- something changed in the file that shouldn't be

How does corruption occur? Some reasons include;
- that portion of the hard drive is broken/bad/error-ed out, which makes the file partially unreadable. The data is lost.
- a program gets interrupted, or crashes, when saving a file
- power loss to the operating system
- viruses

Simply put, how would a program ever know which is the case, and know how to add or subtract the exact portions back? In some cases, the data is lost for good, so how can it repair the file? Etc. If it's simply a file table error, I can see where it MIGHT be possible to repair the allocation, or salvage some data. But other than that, you're pretty much up [parasitic bomb] creek.

This is why people back up things.

Waifu · **Reply #640 on:** May 25, 2011, 03:04:47 AM

@OBJECTION MAN

Then I recovered some files for h, it is like some of them work but some of them don't. I wish that I had simply repaired the files a long while ago and not recovering them is more or a hassle now. I have no one but myself to blame either.

Well, I guess if there is something out there that will allow me to reapir files I might be able to find it but I guess I have no use for useless files. I might as well get rid of them althoiugh there are actually very few files I wanted to recover. Thanks anyway.

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #641 on:** May 25, 2011, 04:06:55 AM

What type of files were they anyway?

Waifu · **Reply #642 on:** May 25, 2011, 05:17:53 AM

They were txt, exe, url, dll, zip and rar files. Some of the were just savestates, roms and emualtors I recovered.

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #643 on:** May 25, 2011, 05:24:07 AM

Quote from: Sakura Matou on May 25, 2011, 05:17:53 AM

They were txt, exe, url, dll, zip and rar files. Some of the were just savestates, roms and emualtors I recovered.

Txt is fairly easy to get a partial recovery out of. Exe, yeah you're screwed on those ones. DLL, Zip, Rar, same deal. Those files are the ones that if you have one tiny bit missing and the whole architecture falls completely apart.

Waifu · **Reply #644 on:** May 25, 2011, 06:28:00 AM

I guess I will stick with text until I find some replacements but how do repair the text files?

OBJECTION MAN · **Reply #645 on:** May 25, 2011, 02:47:53 PM

You probably wont be able to "repair" but rather recover the partial data. Try loading into different text programs, or even a hexeditor. You may have to do some bit offsetting depending where the damage is.

Waifu · **Reply #646 on:** May 25, 2011, 05:23:59 PM

I'll give it a try.

Edit: I decided to give up on theproject, I realize that a large majority of the files I can find on the internet anyway and I have copies of said files that work well (I overcomplicate things

). I still have my favorites intact.

Thanks anyway

Gaia · **Reply #647 on:** June 17, 2011, 01:42:18 AM

For some reason I can't open my mail on MSN, even though I am signed in, and it doesn't look like it refuses to load the "Messenger" portion of the Hotmail section of Hotmail. Has anyone experinced this and does know how to solve it?

Waifu · **Reply #648 on:** August 06, 2011, 04:27:47 PM

I got this jsut as I was downloading a torrent file but it seems to happen whenever I try to move a large file. Just what exactly is going on? I installed my HD well the other day and it didn't have these problems before today. I checked the hardware and its installed fine but I wodner if this a software problem. Did anyone else get this and if so how did you resolve it? I never had this problem before (in my computer at least).

Hiryu · **Reply #649 on:** August 07, 2011, 04:47:18 AM

What exactly did you get? An error message?

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