Undiagnosed crisis

antasari

antasari

antasari

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Joined
24 Dec 2006
Posts
13
Over a week my home desktop gradually fell apart. At first, it would reach the Windows desktop and then freeze after a few minutes. Then it would go blank after reaching the Windows splash screen (and the same would happen with safe boot, and with booting to last known good configuration). Now, it reaches the motherboard splash screen and then goes blank. The machine still has lights on and at least some degree of power, but hitting DEL or f8 during startup, or trying to boot from CD or floppy, now has no effect. (Keyboard still works in other machines.)

Specs:
Asus A8N SLI Deluxe
Athlon 64 FX 55
160 GB Seagate Barracuda
2x512MB Corsair DDR PC3200
480W Tagan PSU
2x XFX Nvidia 6800GT
Sony 16x DVD-ROM
Pioneer DVD+-RW

Windows XP Home
Norton Antivirus 2006
ZoneAlarm
Spybot, AdAware, SpywareGuard, SpywareBlaster

During the deterioration I managed some tests:

Removing one of the two memory sticks made no difference. I ran Memtest for half an hour until freezing, with no errors. I later ran Memtest86 from floppy, for six hours with no errors (with both sticks installed).

I ran CHKDSK on two days. The first replaced "bad clusters" in eight unimportant files; the second ran without any complaints. I also ran Seagate online diagnostics without errors ("no SMART thresholds exceeded" and "extended drive self-test completed without error").

I re-installed Windows at least twice.

I almost never got blue screens. But, twice, I got the message "kernel stack inpage error".

BUT I was never able to complete any anti-malware checks without freezing.

I can't get into the blessed thing now since it freezes so early on in the boot process, so it seems that all I can do is replace bits of hardware until it works again? I guess the first thing to try is replacing the hard drive -- if a new one works, the problem is either the old HDD or malware; and, if it doesn't, then at least I can rule out malware. Makes sense, or any other cunning plans come to mind? Any other tests I can run on such a crippled machine?

in need of some Christmas spirit ... yohoho and all that ...
 
Right well the first thing to try is boot with only the necessary components to complete POST: Motherboard, CPU, cooler, RAM, PSU and ONE graphics card (Make sure you change the jumper to single GPU mode on the motherboard if there is one), that's it and see how far you get with that. If that doesn't work swap the RAM sticks over and also try swapping the graphics cards around :)

EDIT: Welcome to the forums BTW :cool:
 
Hi there,

That doesn't sound too healthy does it. :(

Have you tried clearing the CMOS and possibly re-flashing the BIOS via a floppy disk. (That is, if you have the current BIOS on a floppy).

If not, I would suggest running one memory DIMM and only one Graphics card and then perhaps try a "cheap-o" 40Gb Hard Drive and see if a fresh install on a new drive (with limited hardware on the motherboard) will fix the problem.

Typing that error into Google however brings back this result,
http://www.opentechsupport.net/forums/archive/topic/34731-1.html said:
Hi!

The master boot record is probably infected with a virus.
Start scanning with your Antivirus. + run on line virus scans, from this links:

http://www.bitdefender.com/scan/licence.php

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/

+ download Spybot.

It also could be a faulty RAM memory stick.
Download Memory Test, and run it for a couple of hours.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/memtest.html

Disable "System caching" in BIOS to see if this resolves the error.

Open BIOS, by pressing the "Delete" key at bootup. Use the arrow keys to scroll.
When you have disabled "System cashing. Save the settings in BIOS, before you leave.

Also run windows chkdsk. This you will find in your harddrives propertys, under "My computer" in windows.
Click to expand...

Here is a link to Mircosofts aritcle on the problem, seems to point to a Boot Sector Virus,

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q315266

Sorry I can't help more!
 
If it's not even completing POST, I doubt it has anything to do with the master boot record ;) Good suggestion about a CMOS reset though, forgot about that :o

Firegod said:
Lol darn my slow typing, Trigger beat me to it!
Click to expand...

\o/ :D
 
Firegod said:
Have you tried clearing the CMOS and possibly re-flashing the BIOS via a floppy disk. (That is, if you have the current BIOS on a floppy).
Click to expand...

OK, cleared the CMOS. It seemed to partly help, in that now I get a full POST and can get into my BIOS options, and can boot from floppy into DOS. (I also replaced the batteries on my keyboard .. just in case ... :) )

I still have the original problem -- Windows still completely fails to boot. I saw the advice Firegod found, but I can't find any option to control caching in my BIOS. If anyone knows where it might be lurking, I can give it a go?

I'm not getting a lot of joy by removing unnecessary components, so the next mission is ordering a new hard drive to see if a fresh install of Windows on a clean drive works. Two questions before I do:

SATA II drives will be backwards-compatible with my SATA motherboard, right?

Assuming everything works fine with the new drive on its own, and assuming the problem is malware on my existing drive, is it safe to set it up as a second drive? So I can then run anti-malware checks on it, etc. Or is it easy for the virus/whatever to jump between physical drives? I would imagine it would cross-infect, but a friend tells me that's actually fairly unlikely.

Happy New Year!
 
antasari said:
Two questions before I do:

SATA II drives will be backwards-compatible with my SATA motherboard, right?

Assuming everything works fine with the new drive on its own, and assuming the problem is malware on my existing drive, is it safe to set it up as a second drive? So I can then run anti-malware checks on it, etc. Or is it easy for the virus/whatever to jump between physical drives? I would imagine it would cross-infect, but a friend tells me that's actually fairly unlikely.

Happy New Year!
Click to expand...

Aye Sata-II are backwards compatible, will just run at the slower SATA speed. :) Same connections, etc.

It should be safe imo, but I would personally not open anything from the other drive. (I take it you want to install the new drive, boot from that, and copy stuff over that needs keeping?)

As soon as you get into Windows I'd do a good Virus Scan, although if it is a boot Virus or something, I doubt anything else other than the System folders will be infected? Hmm! I think it would be fairly unlikely as well to "jump across" but you never know.
 
Firegod said:
As soon as you get into Windows I'd do a good Virus Scan, although if it is a boot Virus or something, I doubt anything else other than the System folders will be infected? Hmm! I think it would be fairly unlikely as well to "jump across" but you never know.
Click to expand...
Worth a shot, will report back.

Or another cunning plan: now that I can get into DOS again, I half-hoped to be able to copy files from my hard drive onto an external drive so that I could virus-scan them on another computer. But I don't seem to be able to get into the C drive (my HDD) in DOS. I'm guessing that's because the drive is NTFS so DOS can't read it ... if so, Google brings up a few NTFS readers for DOS, such as:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/ntfsdos.html
http://www.ntfs.com/products.htm

Any obvious reason not to pick one and give it a go?
 
could this possibly be to do with the memory timings being to agressive. i had this on a machine once when the bios was set to Auto for the memory timings and was setting them to fast. set them manually and found all to be well after that.

just a suggestion
 
DR_D said:
could this possibly be to do with the memory timings being to agressive. i had this on a machine once when the bios was set to Auto for the memory timings and was setting them to fast. set them manually and found all to be well after that.

just a suggestion
Click to expand...

This is sound advice.

Having read the full thread, my money is on the RAM being inadvertantly overclocked. Set the timings and voltage manually in the BIOS.

You could also try downloading the Hard Disk utility software from your HDD manufacturer's website and run a scan to check that your HDD is working correctly. This will run from your floppy drive and hopefully rule out a HDD problem.

[J]
 
DR_D said:
could this possibly be to do with the memory timings being to agressive.
Click to expand...

I haven't touched the memory timings in two years, so I'd be surprised if they're suddenly causing problems. But I'll give them a tweak if my current attempt (installing a new hard drive) doesn't help ... will know the result shortly ...
 
Johnnyboy said:
You could also try downloading the Hard Disk utility software from your HDD manufacturer's website and run a scan to check that your HDD is working correctly. This will run from your floppy drive and hopefully rule out a HDD problem.
[J]
Click to expand...

Yep, both that and CHKDSK ran OK in the early days of the problem, which is why I'm currently betting on a virus. If my new hard drive installs successfully in this blessed machine, I'll try to add the old one as a second drive and zap it with hardware and malware checks until it squeals.
 
A quick update, in case anyone with similar symptoms ever searches this thread -- replacing the hard drive has solved the problem, PC is now running smoothly.

Will try adding the old drive later, and see if the problem can be diagnosed.
 
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