The thread title sounds a bit vague so I'll explain in a little more detail.
A few weeks ago I downloaded a piece of software and crack (Slysoft AnyDVD HD) from a torrent site for the simple reason of ripping Blu Ray movies to take some screencaps. There was also a piece of software in the package that supposedly stripped all traces of previous versions from the HD and registry.
Only problem is that it seems to have stripped half the computer of everything.
Immediatley after using it I noticed a message during bios bootup stating that 'No hard drive is detected'. Despite that the PC booted to windows but after logging on it restarted. So it did and the exact same thing happened again.
Started in safe mode and removed AnyDVD and ran Spyware search and Destroy, AVG virus scan and Crap Cleaner. No problems were detected.
Since then (about 3 weeks ago) the problems have been non stop. The 'No hard drive' message remains, as do random problems which come and go as they wish:
optical drive has gone missing
sound card has also disappeared
non stop popups (Firefox must close, Windows explorer must close, Windows mail must close, etc...)
Blue Screens which are exclusively related to a usb problem (happens when I switch on my external HD or usb sticks)
and a particularly strange one, when I attempt to install (legit) new software such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop or ACDSee I get an error stating that the .cab files cannot be found and the installation is aborted.
Now heres the really annoying bit, I formatted the hard drive last night and done a fresh install of Vista 64 Ultimate and the problems remained. I then removed Vista and installed a copy of XP Pro and the above .cab problem is still present (this was at 3.30 this morning so I didn't stay up to check out the other problems).
I'm really at a loss. I may just bring it to a technician but thought I'd ask you folks first.
Could it be a mainboard/BIOS problem? Seeing as I stripped the hard drive clean it couldn't be related to that could it? Unless there is still something on it that wasn't wiped during the format.
A few weeks ago I downloaded a piece of software and crack (Slysoft AnyDVD HD) from a torrent site for the simple reason of ripping Blu Ray movies to take some screencaps. There was also a piece of software in the package that supposedly stripped all traces of previous versions from the HD and registry.
Only problem is that it seems to have stripped half the computer of everything.
Immediatley after using it I noticed a message during bios bootup stating that 'No hard drive is detected'. Despite that the PC booted to windows but after logging on it restarted. So it did and the exact same thing happened again.
Started in safe mode and removed AnyDVD and ran Spyware search and Destroy, AVG virus scan and Crap Cleaner. No problems were detected.
Since then (about 3 weeks ago) the problems have been non stop. The 'No hard drive' message remains, as do random problems which come and go as they wish:
optical drive has gone missing
sound card has also disappeared
non stop popups (Firefox must close, Windows explorer must close, Windows mail must close, etc...)
Blue Screens which are exclusively related to a usb problem (happens when I switch on my external HD or usb sticks)
and a particularly strange one, when I attempt to install (legit) new software such as Microsoft Office or Photoshop or ACDSee I get an error stating that the .cab files cannot be found and the installation is aborted.
Now heres the really annoying bit, I formatted the hard drive last night and done a fresh install of Vista 64 Ultimate and the problems remained. I then removed Vista and installed a copy of XP Pro and the above .cab problem is still present (this was at 3.30 this morning so I didn't stay up to check out the other problems).
I'm really at a loss. I may just bring it to a technician but thought I'd ask you folks first.
Could it be a mainboard/BIOS problem? Seeing as I stripped the hard drive clean it couldn't be related to that could it? Unless there is still something on it that wasn't wiped during the format.
