Could a Virus Do this??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dan
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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 said:
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.
Click to expand...

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
 
Dan said:
I have a customer whom has a desktop with windows xp pro SP2. They have a
Click to expand...

(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
 
Dan said:
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
Click to expand...

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


Malke
 
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?
 
Dan said:
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?
Click to expand...

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
 
i did all three tests. All passed.


Malke said:
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
Click to expand...
 
Dan said:
i did all three tests. All passed.
Click to expand...

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
 
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