O/S possibly infected - cannot boot from O/S disc to format and reinstall!

[rjsdavis]

I have an HP NC6400 laptop that my wife has been using for a while. I had a look at it the other days, as it was running superslowly and very unresponsive, and there was a problem with the Kaspersky security that was out of date etc. Conclusion was that the laptop was possibly infected and a virus was causing the slowdown.

Fortunately, the HD is multi-partitioned, and the majority of data is on non-system partitions. The data from the main system has been copied to non system partitions, and I decided to simply format the system partition and reinstall the O/S.

It had originally been running Win 7, but received the free Win 10 upgrade. However, and here's the problem, I cannot boot the laptop from either a Win7 OR Win10 DVD rom sitting in the DVD multibay drive!

I've been into the BIOS settings to check the boot order, and the multibay is first. The harddrive is about sixth iirc. It is clearly accessing and reading the DVD, as it does "so far" in the boot sequence (which I've done many times over the years), but then stops and the laptop simply powers off.

I've interrupted the boot with "F9" to select the "Boot Device Menu", and manually selected the Multibay drive. Shortly thereafter, I get the "Press any key to boot from CD or DVD"... Enter key is struck, and the computer appears to start booting from the DVD.

I get the "Windows is loading files" (When trying to boot from the Win7 DVD), and it goes through the white progress bar pretty quickly, and then attempts the second progress bar. From this point, and it's different pretty much everytime, the progress bar just won't get to the end of the sweep for the second time, and the computer simply turns itself off at some point during the second sweep.

I can see that the HD is being accessed as it's doing this from the green light on the front of the laptop. I've only ever got to "Starting Windows" once. I made the fatal error of clicking "Repair Installation" rather than clicking on the main "Install Now" button, and I can't get back to it!! FML!

I can't really understand why it's proving so damn difficult to even get this process started. All I want to do is run the laptop from the DVD. Format the system partition and reinstall an O/S so that I can get past the slow-running issues. When the laptop is powered on and boots normally from the HD - it boots normally (and as quickly as you'd expect) and boots into Win10 without any real bother. Then it starts to slow way, way down and becomes completely unusable.

My guess is that the HD is failing and starting to die? I can't really think of anything else that would cause me such slow-running / DVD boot problems? (Other than a virus infection of course).

Any pointers would be very much appreciated. I'm getting close to flinging it out of the window!

 

[ingtar33]

The shut downs are probably temp related. Generally speaking old laptops do a poor job keeping themselves cool, im sure it's running hard, overheating and shutting itself down to keep from damaging itself.

your other problem sounds like a dying hard drive to me. that's an OLD laptop (nearly 10yo), i'd be surprised if it could even run win10; generally the min ram I recommend for a win10 system is 8gb. lots of reasons that old thing might not be working. I suppose you could buy her a solid state drive and start over. But in reality it's so old I think you'd just be delaying the inevitable.

 

[smorizio]

in case the dvd writer has an issue use the windows media creation tool make a bootable usb stick.

 

[rjsdavis]

The shut downs are probably temp related. Generally speaking old laptops do a poor job keeping themselves cool, im sure it's running hard, overheating and shutting itself down to keep from damaging itself.

your other problem sounds like a dying hard drive to me. that's an OLD laptop (nearly 10yo), i'd be surprised if it could even run win10; generally the min ram I recommend for a win10 system is 8gb. lots of reasons that old thing might not be working. I suppose you could buy her a solid state drive and start over. But in reality it's so old I think you'd just be delaying the inevitable.

Thank you for the reply - appreciated.

I'm giving some thought to simply removing the HD, sticking her in an external caddy, and running some tests/diagnostics on it... what's the best software to really check out how good/bad a HD is?

 

[smorizio]

wd and seagate have there own drive test tools. hdtune will read hard drive smart info.

 

[rjsdavis]

I've now removed the HD, and stuck into an external USB caddy. It's starting to look immediately obvious that the drive is on the verge of failure. My first priority is extract all of the key data from it, before it fails completely.

What it's doing, is beeping when I plug it in. The computer that it's plugged into sends Windows alerts that state that there are errors on the drive. The drive works for a while, and then effectively turns itself off and Win Explorer shuts off. I'm trying to get as much data off on each attempt as possible. I wouldn't describe it as "clicking" (as I know this means - don't use it or even turn it on again), and whilst the drive is live, it does work.

Is there anything I can do to mitigate or prolong life of the drive enough to copy off the data and then scrap it? From attaching to a computer, it lasts no longer than 2 minutes (from cold) before going off again. If you unplug and plug in again, it will work again, but for less time.

 

[smorizio]

if it a heat issue an old tric is put the drive in a frezzer to cool it it may work once.

 

[rjsdavis]

if it a heat issue an old tric is put the drive in a frezzer to cool it it may work once.

Thanks. It appears to be random.

I think I've just managed to get everything off - there was only about 20-30 gig of irreplaceable data, but it's pics and the Outlook .pst file that were the essentials. I managed, by luck really, to get the drive to remain stable for the last ten minutes and everything appears to be off now.

I'll get a brand new drive, rebuild the laptop, and should be good for getting everything back on afterwards, as I still have the old failing drive, just in case I've missed anything epicly irreplaceable. I'm guessing it's a mechanical failure of the drive that's getting closer and closer to absolute failure.

So far, I'm pretty convinced that it wasn't a virus, and was just a failing HD that's got a mechanical issue and therefore a bit hit and miss as to whether it works or not. Clearly, it will be destroyed, but, hopefully, I've got to the bottom of what the issue actually is.

Annoyingly, I've just stuck in an 8TB Personal Cloud, that is expressly for the purpose of backing up all of the family's computer's so that nonsense like this isn't even an issue!! It won't be an issue again... :facepalm:

 

[rjsdavis]

SOLVED:

It was a dying HD that was filled with errors, and was causing the unstable system and slower and slower running. A brand new black series WD HD has made all of the difference in the world, it now runs really fast, and all data was able to be recovered. Wife was delighted to get her computer and all data back and intact!

 

[karenjoly]

ok