Virus destroyed my machine?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jethro
  • Start date Start date
J

Jethro

I had a failure on my one-HD system (XP PRO SP2).
It suddenly ceased doing a cold boot. It would just hang just after
the Welcome screen.
I decided to try a new hard drive, which would require a re-install of
XP. After the initial loading of the various files from the XP
installation disk, it failed with what I will call a BSOD. It said I
should do a CHKDSK, and that I may have a virus. I ran a SCANDISK
instead, and found no errors. I tried another install and got the
same BSOD failure.

I am wondering - could a virus have infected my MOBO or other
hardware? Or maybe the BIOS? I never thought a virus could do that,
but maybe it could?

Thank you

Willy
 
Jethro said:
I had a failure on my one-HD system (XP PRO SP2).
It suddenly ceased doing a cold boot. It would just hang just after
the Welcome screen.
I decided to try a new hard drive, which would require a re-install of
XP. After the initial loading of the various files from the XP
installation disk, it failed with what I will call a BSOD. It said I
should do a CHKDSK, and that I may have a virus. I ran a SCANDISK
instead, and found no errors.
Click to expand...

Windows XP uses chkdsk, not the older scandisk.


Run Memtest from a bootable CD or floppy. Many recent Linux installation
CDs contain Memtest. A defective RAM module may be the problem.
I am wondering - could a virus have infected my MOBO or other
hardware? Or maybe the BIOS?
Click to expand...

Not likely.
 
Windows XP uses chkdsk, not the older scandisk.
Click to expand...
CHKDSK took forever - showed no errors.
Run Memtest from a bootable CD or floppy. Many recent Linux installation
CDs contain Memtest. A defective RAM module may be the problem.
Click to expand...

MEMTEST took forever - showed no errors.
Not likely.
Click to expand...

Today the troubled system boots from a known good hard drive (unlike
yesterday). So I conclude that the MOBO etc may be okay.

I am going to try the installation on the other hard drive again.
Maybe my system runs better on Saturdays?


:<)
Thank you for your suggestions.
Willy
 
Jethro said:
I had a failure on my one-HD system (XP PRO SP2).
It suddenly ceased doing a cold boot. It would just hang just after
the Welcome screen.
I decided to try a new hard drive, which would require a re-install of
XP. After the initial loading of the various files from the XP
installation disk, it failed with what I will call a BSOD. It said I
should do a CHKDSK, and that I may have a virus. I ran a SCANDISK
instead, and found no errors. I tried another install and got the
same BSOD failure.

I am wondering - could a virus have infected my MOBO or other
hardware? Or maybe the BIOS? I never thought a virus could do that,
but maybe it could?

Thank you

Willy
Click to expand...

You could try moving the HD to another pc and see if the other PC can recognise
it.
You could then save important stuff before re-installing XP. If the windows
program files are corrupt windows may not load but other files can be salvaged
this way.

If the other pc has XP also you could try copy EXE, DLL etc files from the other
PC to the HD that has a problem. It could in situations where the executable file
are corrupted.
 
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