My PC Laptop is Dead!

UffDa

UffDa

Gold Member
Joined
Sep 11, 1999
Messages
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While visiting my daughter's family my laptop was attacked. Whatever it was wiped out the driver for the HDD. I had two anti-malware programs running, but the virus or whatever got around them. (This is not the first time that has happened to me and I wasn't even looking at porn. :grumpy:)

Since I can't even get to the HDD, I can't access the built in recovery software. Has anyone had any experience with the various recovery disks? I see them offered on eBay and other sources.
 
if the laptop still powers up, you can use a live Linux cd/dvd/usb stick, pick your flavor :D, to get access to that hard drive contents.
after that, format it and reinstall your operating system, either with the recovery partition, or do a fresh install, and erase that recovery part.
 
fugawee said:
can you reboot into safe mode?
Click to expand...

No. The screen with the safe mode choices comes up, but that's as far as it goes. It tries to load Windows and shows that the HDD is running, but nothing happens.
When I run HDD diagnostics I get the message that there is no HDD driver.

I just got home last night. I'll ask the kid at the shop. He probably has a Linux CD.

This is my 4th dead PC. My iMac is looking better and better. :D
 
This probably isn't the fix, but it is something I have never heard of, but I found out about it online and it fixed a problem with my wife's laptop. Unplug it, take the battery out, and hold the power button down for about 30 seconds. Apparently, this is a BIOS reset or something. Can't hurt to try. Good luck.
 
with the limited info,
kinda sounds like the hard drive went south.
However,before I recommend you go get a new hard drive
(they are cheap and easy to change)
I would like you to try the info on this link
http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.shtml
report back what you find.


btw,how are you running HDD Diagnostics?
your not providing enough details :)
what kind of laptop is it,win7? winxp?
etc etc
 
If it indeed is your Hard drive, check out the 7200 rpm hard drives on Newegg.com. They have a good selection, added warranties, and a solid reputation. I recommend a 7200 simply because they are faster, noticeably faster. You might see a decrease in battery life, however if you keep the computer plugged in anyway, it will not matter.

After you get the HD, have the kid at the store fix you up with Ubuntu. It is a Linux OS, just a bit more user friendly than most others. I will further recommend that if you go the Ubuntu route, do not get the latest version (11.10). Instead go with 11.04. It has been around longer and is simply more stable.
 
There are a whole handful of things that can go wrong with a harddrive that might cause that -- most of which are hardware/mechanical related tho (probably not a virus, although maybe possible). Especially with laptops what happens is the arm that does all the writing/reading can write in the wrong place on the disk or write the wrong thing because its really not good for a spinning hard drive to do anything but lay perfectly flat while its doing its thing. Something else may have physically happened also, like maybe the disk still spins but the writing/reading head is broken and so your computer is trying to talk to it, isnt getting anything it understands in return, and says welp I must not have a driver for it.

I'm not saying your other failures were due to this also, as I dont know the details, but like 95% of the time (made up statistic, extrapolated from real life experience ;) ) its something physical that causes a harddrive failure, not viral. If you dont need a lot of space on your laptop..check into solid state drives and I think you'll have less problems.
 
It could be a hardware failure, instead of some sort of virus.

Easy way to check, follow jacktrades_nbk's advice. Boot the computer from an operating system on a CD or USB stick (Damn Small Linux D.S.L. is fast and easy). If you can access the hard drive, then go ahead and back up your personal files before doing anything else. If it can't 'see' the hard drive, then there's likely a problem with either the hard drive itself or the hard drive controller that's part of the motherboard.

It would help if you posted the exact model of laptop.

The thing (ripoff) about modern store-bought computers is that they don't include the disk for reinstalling the original software or operating system. Instead they often have a recovery partition on the hard drive, which is absolutely useless if the hard drive goes bad. :mad:
 
did you buy this new?? if so then where is you cd that came with the laptop??use them if it is just a software problem.
 
did you burn the restore disks when you got your laptop? if you did you can restore from the disks. i told zaph1 about your problem and he might be albe to help you out since he is a computer repair master :D.
 
I talked to the "kid" at the shop and told him what happened. It was definitely some kind of malware attack that caused this. He had a name for it, but I already forgot what it was.

Here's what happened as I remember it.

1st, Microsoft Security Essentials popped up and said that there were two problems and attempted to clean them. Then it popped up again and showed 3 problems.
Then, the screen went black and there was a cascade of rectangular blocks indicating that my computers memory and drivers were gone. It had a box to click on
that said Buy Now. (?) There was no name anywhere to indicate who I was buying anything from. (?) At that point I shut the computer off.

There are diagnostic programs in the firmware. The HDD test shows that there is no driver. When I tried to repair it with my Windows XP disk I get the message
that Windows can't find the HDD.

I had this happen twice before on PCs. It is not a hardware failure. BTW, I have an extra laptop hard disk, but it has stuff stored from my old Dell desktop.

A friend is going to give me a CD that will copy the data from the HDD. Then I can format the disk and start over.

I have come to the conclusion that PCs are a PITA. No matter how hard you try to protect yourself, there is someone out there who gets joy from causing
you grief. :confused::grumpy:
 
I bought my wife a Macbook Pro last year. Very nice, but SO DAMN EXPENSIVE!! I actually ran into the driver issue when I first started using Ubuntu, and will admit it almost turned me away from using it further. It took me a while to get my laptop working with my Canon printer. Hopefully the next few versions will eliminate this issue.
 
Sounds like you need to run chkdsk on the drive. The HDD is corrupt, when it becamse corrupt it could no longer find any drivers or other parts of windows. As much as we wish to blame them, it's extremely unlikely that this is the result of malware. I'd look at power surges, solar flares, static, etc., first. Electricity tends to cause problems like this. If it were malware, it would popup and ask you to purchase the program to fix the problems.

Boot to a bootable CD and chkdsk /r c: After that, copy your data off and reinstall windows.
 
This is why you need to make a back up on an external hard drive every month or two. You can set it to back up while you go to sleep. That way you have a back up in case of virus attacks, corrupt HDD, and a dead HDD. Once you have a problem with you HDD, you can boot from the external HDD, format the internal HDD, then copy over everything back onto the internal one. This is recommended for both Windows or Mac OS, HDD can fail on both, Macs can get viruses, and if they do formatting may be the only option.

Get malwarebytes as well, if you already have a program, you can use the trial malwarebytes to scan since most other anti virus programs suck ass compared to it (eg Norton, Mcafe).
 
Sigh. I don't know why I bother posting here. :confused: It seems that no matter how hard I try, what I write is not read or understood. :(

1. There was a popup asking me to purchase something.

2. I had Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials running. it didn't make any difference.

3. I can not run chkdsk. It does not exist on this computer.
 
UffDa said:
Sigh. I don't know why I bother posting here. :confused: It seems that no matter how hard I try, what I write is not read or understood. :(
3. I can not run chkdsk. It does not exist on this computer.
Click to expand...

as zaph1 wrote,
"Boot to a bootable CD and chkdsk /r c: After that, copy your data off and reinstall windows"

if you can get a bootable cd with system files on it,
chkdsk will be on it and the /r repair switch will
straighten out c:
 
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