Lehpron From United States, joined Jul 2001, 7027 posts, RR: 32 Posted (7 years 1 week 3 days 3 hours ago) and read 220 times:
i dont know what happened but my roomate computer is not starting properly and it is really scaring me. first of all, it is a windows XP home edition w/ a P4 chip. i am already having a hard time typing this cuz i am on my suitemates computer and they are all on their thanksgiving break, i cannot aford to move around until the winter break -- this laptop i'm on is from france and the keys are all screwed up!
Anyways, this is the situation:
i was downloading some old classic cartoon off of kazzalite when for whatever reason the reset button decided not to work when the machine froze, so i shut off the main to restart. Then came the safemode options, not really knowing if anything bad happened, i chose start normally. then came a series of CHKDISK scans that checked the files (1 of 5), indices (2 of 5), security discriptions (3 of 5), data files (4 of 5) and the free space verification (5 of 5).
that took a little over an hour, which surprised me since it has an 1800 mhz chip. after it was done and said the disk was clean, it stopped. i.e. it froze again! so i turned it off and on again and tried safemode then it froze while in commnd mode. I define a "froze" as that point where the computer wont act on any command for five minutes or more.
what do i do? it could be my fault i could have accidently starteda virus but i checked every file and we check the whole computer every day.
i could just blame it on my suitemates cuz not too long ago they donwloaded something on my roommate's computer without his permision that ended up having a virus attached to a game batch file. He got pissed an put on a password, which did not stop them cuz last week they made an account on his computer. you see my roommate did let them use the cd-burner feature on his machine since they don't have one on the very laptop i am using right now. my roommate is passive and doesnt care much since they are going back to france at the end of this semester. it is an example of looking like "a dog that bites the hand that feeds it" deal.
i dont know when my suitemates come back but my roommate will be back on saturday.
HELP ME!
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
Killjoy From Finland, joined Dec 1999, 646 posts, RR: 0 Reply 2, posted (7 years 1 week 3 days 2 hours ago) and read 205 times:
If you were downloading a video file, it's doubtful you have a virus. (unless it came from another source)
Also, hard drive scans depend on the speed of the hard drive, not the CPU, so it'll take a long time no matter how fast your computer is.
Sometimes it's worthwhile to wait more than 5 minutes. Are you sure it wasn't doing anything while it wasn't responding? (ok so a working computer should respond, but we all know that's not always the case...)
What was shown on the screen when it stopped responding? Any error messages at any point?
I probably won't be here when you answer these questions, but maybe someone else can help you more. In the meantime, you may want to try to boot from the Windows XP CD-ROM and see what kind of recovery options it has. I can't remember right now. Happy thanksgiving.
Lehpron From United States, joined Jul 2001, 7027 posts, RR: 32 Reply 4, posted (7 years 1 week 3 days 1 hour ago) and read 190 times:
** Sometimes it's worthwhile to wait more than 5 minutes. Are you sure it wasn't doing anything while it wasn't responding? **
i know i didnt hear anything from the tower plus it did not react to any keystroke not even crtl-alt-del.
** What was shown on the screen when it stopped responding? Any error messages at any point? **
i will type ecactly what was there an hour ago after it did its series of CHKDISK scans:
Checking file system on C:
The type of volume on the system is NTFS.
The volume is clean.
windows has finished checking the disk.
yet it refuses to bother restarting or doing anything else but show that blue screen!
** I probably won't be here when you answer these questions, but maybe someone else can help you more. **
yes please anyone else?
** In the meantime, you may want to try to boot from the Windows XP CD-ROM and see what kind of recovery options it has. I can't remember right now. Happy thanksgiving. **
boot what from the cdrom? what would this cd look like and how do i make it respond to the cdrom as any cd i put in to 'catch the computers attention' does not work?
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
Lehpron From United States, joined Jul 2001, 7027 posts, RR: 32 Reply 5, posted (7 years 1 week 3 days 1 hour ago) and read 187 times:
174thfwff, if you were refering to the ' last known good configuration' as a rewind, well it did not do anything different. perhaps i do not know what you were refering to, please tell me how to get there. i will retypre what happened after i choose that option mentioned above:
Checking file system on C:
The type of volume on the system is NTFS.
A disk checking has been scheduled.
The disk checking has been cancelled (cuz i did it 3 times) windows has finished checking the disk
Pardon moi, no voilà!
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
KAL_LM From United States, joined Jun 2001, 497 posts, RR: 0 Reply 6, posted (7 years 1 week 3 days ago) and read 180 times:
Lephron...
a Windows XP boot cd/disc should have been included with your original documenation that came with the computer (like the XP installation disc, they all have them...). Pop that in and the computer should boot from that instead of the usual hard drive, from there you should have the option to go into "safe" mode and then either restore or repair (can't remember which) and that should fix your problem. You may have to re-format and wipe the hard drive clean and do a full re-install (which will require the original Windows XP cd as well), but that's kind of last resort. Oh yeah, anti-virus software is a real good idea when dealing with KaZaa...
Good Luck!
regards,
Tom
is that a light at the end of the tunnel or just a train?
Lehpron From United States, joined Jul 2001, 7027 posts, RR: 32 Reply 8, posted (7 years 1 week 3 days ago) and read 172 times:
jetService, the moniter is Samsung and the tower is VPR Matrix (i never heard of them)
I'll try that out now, if it does in an hour i will go to sleep and deal with it in the morning, which hopefully will be ~9 hours from now. i might respond before i sleep if not good night y'all and thanx ' the help. see ya later.
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
JetService From United States, joined Feb 2000, 4798 posts, RR: 18 Reply 9, posted (7 years 1 week 2 days 23 hours ago) and read 166 times:
Lehpron, OK, a friend of mine has a fairly new Compaq and he tells me something to what you describe happened to him. He called the tech support and they said it had something to do with AOL 8 that was bundled from the factory. Apparently, it is causing major problems with virus-like symptoms. Their solution was to send him a 'special' install disk to basically reformat the whole thing. I'm a Mac guy and didn't quite understand everything he was saying. I told him in that situation, I would just boot off of the CD and fix the problem (or at least salvage files), but he said that couldn't be done (???)
Lehpron From United States, joined Jul 2001, 7027 posts, RR: 32 Reply 10, posted (7 years 1 week 2 days 23 hours ago) and read 166 times:
174thfwff, i found what you were talking about but i would need to have been logged in to try, which hopefully i will be after i take a shower and pop in the boot cd. (not while in the shower of course )
problem: there are two drives one is audio CD and the other is a DVD/CDRW, which one to use, does it matter? i'll be out in 20min, mainly cuz i got that new tori amos stuck in my head.
The meaning of life is curiosity; we were put on this planet to explore opportunities.
Lehpron From United States, joined Jul 2001, 7027 posts, RR: 32 Reply 11, posted (7 years 1 week 2 days 21 hours ago) and read 158 times:
SUCCESS, baby!!
I got it to work. First I found 1 of 2 'Restore CD's labeled with VPR Matrix rather than Microsoft, interesting. Anyways, I put in only the first cd into the audio cd-rom drive the very next second after turning it on. Then it told me to either press 'r' to restore or any other key to start normally, I pressed 'r'. Doing so bypassed the bullshitte I was slaving through for the past 5 hours and, via safe mode, I actually got onto the desktop -- there's a sight for sore eyes! Then I pressed the 'start' button at the bottom then went to accessories then system tools then system restore. Going through the step by step process in the XP's manual on page 223 or 223, I set it back about 2 weeks; before our suitemates made their own account. Ha to them, ha for me, oh shitte I don't have to panic anymore thought I still sweat...
I'd like to thank all of you for your assistance, even those of you who didn’t respond. You might have been thinking of something while I had no clue what that could possibly be.
Anyways thank you, thank you and thank you again!!
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