G
Guest
I am running Windows XP Pro, with an AMD 1800 processor, Soyo K7-V Dragon Plus! motherboard, and PNY GeForce4 ti4200 video card. Also a 60 GB IBM hard drive. By the way, all my hardware was purchased at Fry's, but went a long while with no problems. I suppose it's possible that some of it has gotten old.
Okay, a couple of months ago my computer started to act really weird. It started to reboot itself totally randomly, and sometimes it would just turn off for no reason at all (it didn't matter whether I was running ten programs at once, or nothing at all.)
I did a virus scan, and it turned out I had the Welchia worm. I got rid of it, but it came back a bunch of times. This was the only virus Norton (fully updated) ever detected, and I actually only detected it because it was going around my school and I used Symantec's removal tool for it. Anyhow, I'm not even sure that that was the source of my problem.
The problems got worse and worse. It got to where I couldn't even check my e-mail without my computer crashing on me. My monitor (or video card) crashed on me a few times also, and for some very weird reason, I could not click and drag files on my computer (the file simply would not move beneath my mouse, although the mouse worked fine otherwise.)
I reformatted my computer. No troubles with that, and my computer was working fine again for a while. (This makes it seem unlikely to be a hardware problem.)
After a few weeks, the same problems started happening (but not the weird mouse problem.) I did virus scan after virus scan, and nothing. I reformatted AGAIN.
By the way, at this point it is Christmas Break, and I am at my boyfriend's house, with a different Internet connection and no Welchia going around.
So, a couple of days ago, I reformatted yet again. Computer started rebooting itself again, yadda yadda. I took down two of the STOP errors I got, 0x000000E3 and 0x00000050, but I researched them and no help (one of them had to do with an HP printer driver, but I don't have a printer installed.)
NOW for the real problem. The last time my computer crashed, I turned it back on and - Look, ma! No hard drive!
BIOS detected only my CD roms. I even went into CMOS and tried to get it to redetect it, and I tried to find it manually, and nothing.
This happened before, but if I turned off the hard power switch (in the back,) and waited and turned it back on, it would be fine.
Now, I am afraid it is gone.
My question is, could I have some sort of bad hardware virus that my software (and online scans from a ew companies) could not detect?
Is my hard drive dead? My motherboard? If that were true, wouldn't the problem have been sudden, and not seemingly fixed by reformatting?
If I did have an "undetectable" virus, could it have gotten to my CDs of backup files? There is nothing special on them, mostly just GIFs and DOCs.
One more thing: each time I reformatted, I did regular NTFS file system, not "quick" format.
Okay, a couple of months ago my computer started to act really weird. It started to reboot itself totally randomly, and sometimes it would just turn off for no reason at all (it didn't matter whether I was running ten programs at once, or nothing at all.)
I did a virus scan, and it turned out I had the Welchia worm. I got rid of it, but it came back a bunch of times. This was the only virus Norton (fully updated) ever detected, and I actually only detected it because it was going around my school and I used Symantec's removal tool for it. Anyhow, I'm not even sure that that was the source of my problem.
The problems got worse and worse. It got to where I couldn't even check my e-mail without my computer crashing on me. My monitor (or video card) crashed on me a few times also, and for some very weird reason, I could not click and drag files on my computer (the file simply would not move beneath my mouse, although the mouse worked fine otherwise.)
I reformatted my computer. No troubles with that, and my computer was working fine again for a while. (This makes it seem unlikely to be a hardware problem.)
After a few weeks, the same problems started happening (but not the weird mouse problem.) I did virus scan after virus scan, and nothing. I reformatted AGAIN.
By the way, at this point it is Christmas Break, and I am at my boyfriend's house, with a different Internet connection and no Welchia going around.
So, a couple of days ago, I reformatted yet again. Computer started rebooting itself again, yadda yadda. I took down two of the STOP errors I got, 0x000000E3 and 0x00000050, but I researched them and no help (one of them had to do with an HP printer driver, but I don't have a printer installed.)
NOW for the real problem. The last time my computer crashed, I turned it back on and - Look, ma! No hard drive!
BIOS detected only my CD roms. I even went into CMOS and tried to get it to redetect it, and I tried to find it manually, and nothing.
This happened before, but if I turned off the hard power switch (in the back,) and waited and turned it back on, it would be fine.
Now, I am afraid it is gone.
My question is, could I have some sort of bad hardware virus that my software (and online scans from a ew companies) could not detect?
Is my hard drive dead? My motherboard? If that were true, wouldn't the problem have been sudden, and not seemingly fixed by reformatting?
If I did have an "undetectable" virus, could it have gotten to my CDs of backup files? There is nothing special on them, mostly just GIFs and DOCs.
One more thing: each time I reformatted, I did regular NTFS file system, not "quick" format.