[Kelbrina]

I came home from lunch to find a message popped up on my computer. It was obviously some sort of malware trying to get me to install it. The only box to check was "ok" so I tried to alt+F4 out of the program, and then I tried to ctrl+alt+dlt. Neither worked. So, I then tried to just force shut off my computer, and it was booting down, but then the program was on my screen even as the computer was shutting down, and it wasn't letting it turn off. So I hit the off switch on the back of my case.

Tried to reboot it, and it got to the "windows wasn't properly shut down" screen, and my keyboard did not work for me to select "boot windows normally" so it counted down and started booting up, however, once it got past the XP loading screen, the computer just restarted. Great! Now, I'm scared. I get another harddrive I have lying around, plug it in, and windows starts booting up but my mouse/keyboard don't work.

Now, I don't know what to do and I am very scared because I have my entire graphic design portfolio on my harddive (unbacked-up, of course, because I'm an idiot). What should I do? I tried several different keyboards and none worked, although they light up briefly for a second, then are not recognized at all. I also tried a keyboard that plugs into the traditional keyboard port, which also didn't work.

So uh, help please? Really scared for my data !

[Advertisements]

Hello kelbrina.... Welcome to GeeksToGo,

I'm sorry to hear about your issue. We will try to help you resolve this as soon as possible.
Please understand we are all volunteers and we are not here all the time. Sometimes it may be a extended amount of time to get back to you. If it has been more then 3 days please shoot me a PM and I will try to get back to you quickly then.
First lets get your data backed up.

Get Puppy Linux from my signature below...Get puppy-2.16-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso download it and burn it to cd
..
if you don't have a burning program that will burn .ISO files get Burncdcc from my signature...it is a small FAST no frills iso burning program...

NOTE...do not put a blank cd in until burncdcc opens the tray for you
1. Start BurnCDCC
2. Browse to the ISO file you want to burn on cd/dvd ....in this case its puppy-2.16-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso
3. Select the ISO file
4. click on Start

make sure in the bios the cd drive is the first boot device....

put the cd in the cd drive..boot your computer....puppy will boot and run totally in ram...if your hardware is is good working order you will know...
after you get it running and your at the desktop...you take the puppy linux cd out and then you can use the burner to copy all your data to cd/dvds
you can also use it to backup your data to a external usb harddrive..just have it hooked to the computer when you boot up with puppy...

==========================
quick guide for saving data...music..files on a system that will not boot using puppy Linux..


after you get to puppy desktop..
click on the drives icon...looks like a flash drive...top row..it will list all the drives connected to

your computer...

click on the red icon for the drive you want to mount...in this case its a flash drive ...puppy will

mount the drive..the drive icon turns green when its mounted...
minimize the drives mounter window..you will need it again in a few minutes..
drag the right edge of it sideways to shrink it to its narrowest size...about half the width of the screen...then drag the window to the right edge of the screen...

now click on the icon that looks like a filing cabinet (kind of yellow) on the main drive...it should
already be green..
you will see a list of all the folders on the main drive Usually your C: drive..shrink that window to
the narrowest you can..about half the width of the screen...drag that window to the left side of the screen...
at this point you should have 2 windows open on your desktop..the flash drive on the right side..
go back to the folders on the C: drive...click on the documents and settings folder...then your user
name or all users..find the folders that has your data..
drag and drop the folder with the data you want to make copies of to the flash drive window...

your options are to move ..copy ect...JUST COPY..if its to big you will have to open the folder and
drag and drop individual files until the flash drive is full...(I have a 120 GB external USB drive for
big data recovery jobs and a 4 GB flash drive for the smaller jobs)..after you get the files copied to
the flash drive...
Click on the drives mounter you minimized earlier
UNMOUNT THE FLASH DRIVE by clicking on the green icon..you will once in awhile get error messages when
unmouting the drive..ignore them..when the flash drive icon turns red again its safe to remove the
flash drive..trot on over (stroll if you want to look cool) to another computer and plug in the flash

drive and copy all the data files ( I drag and drop) to the other computer..
make sure the other computer can read them...

now delete the data on the flash drive...take it back to the misbehaving computer and plug it in

again..click on the drives icon again and repeat until you have all your data transferred to the working
system..

Thanks to happyrock

[rshaffer61]

Hello kelbrina.... Welcome to GeeksToGo,

I'm sorry to hear about your issue. We will try to help you resolve this as soon as possible.
Please understand we are all volunteers and we are not here all the time. Sometimes it may be a extended amount of time to get back to you. If it has been more then 3 days please shoot me a PM and I will try to get back to you quickly then.
First lets get your data backed up.

Get Puppy Linux from my signature below...Get puppy-2.16-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso download it and burn it to cd
..
if you don't have a burning program that will burn .ISO files get Burncdcc from my signature...it is a small FAST no frills iso burning program...

NOTE...do not put a blank cd in until burncdcc opens the tray for you
1. Start BurnCDCC
2. Browse to the ISO file you want to burn on cd/dvd ....in this case its puppy-2.16-seamonkey-fulldrivers.iso
3. Select the ISO file
4. click on Start

make sure in the bios the cd drive is the first boot device....

put the cd in the cd drive..boot your computer....puppy will boot and run totally in ram...if your hardware is is good working order you will know...
after you get it running and your at the desktop...you take the puppy linux cd out and then you can use the burner to copy all your data to cd/dvds
you can also use it to backup your data to a external usb harddrive..just have it hooked to the computer when you boot up with puppy...

==========================
quick guide for saving data...music..files on a system that will not boot using puppy Linux..


after you get to puppy desktop..
click on the drives icon...looks like a flash drive...top row..it will list all the drives connected to

your computer...

click on the red icon for the drive you want to mount...in this case its a flash drive ...puppy will

mount the drive..the drive icon turns green when its mounted...
minimize the drives mounter window..you will need it again in a few minutes..
drag the right edge of it sideways to shrink it to its narrowest size...about half the width of the screen...then drag the window to the right edge of the screen...

now click on the icon that looks like a filing cabinet (kind of yellow) on the main drive...it should
already be green..
you will see a list of all the folders on the main drive Usually your C: drive..shrink that window to
the narrowest you can..about half the width of the screen...drag that window to the left side of the screen...
at this point you should have 2 windows open on your desktop..the flash drive on the right side..
go back to the folders on the C: drive...click on the documents and settings folder...then your user
name or all users..find the folders that has your data..
drag and drop the folder with the data you want to make copies of to the flash drive window...

your options are to move ..copy ect...JUST COPY..if its to big you will have to open the folder and
drag and drop individual files until the flash drive is full...(I have a 120 GB external USB drive for
big data recovery jobs and a 4 GB flash drive for the smaller jobs)..after you get the files copied to
the flash drive...
Click on the drives mounter you minimized earlier
UNMOUNT THE FLASH DRIVE by clicking on the green icon..you will once in awhile get error messages when
unmouting the drive..ignore them..when the flash drive icon turns red again its safe to remove the
flash drive..trot on over (stroll if you want to look cool) to another computer and plug in the flash

drive and copy all the data files ( I drag and drop) to the other computer..
make sure the other computer can read them...

now delete the data on the flash drive...take it back to the misbehaving computer and plug it in

again..click on the drives icon again and repeat until you have all your data transferred to the working
system..

Thanks to happyrock

[Kelbrina]

Thank you for the quick reply! I managed to run my hard drive as a secondary drive on another machine, and I am now copying off what important files I can find. So now I just have ac oomputer that doesn't let the keyboard/mice work, and a hard drive that, I think, can not be run as a primary drive.

Edited by Kelbrina, 17 January 2010 - 01:28 PM.

[rshaffer61]

So now I just have ac oomputer that doesn't let the keyboard/mice work, and a hard drive that, I think, can not be run as a primary drive

Is this a different system then?
I don't see any reference to that one.

[Kelbrina]

No, my original computer with the issue is the one without the keyboard or mouse working, and when my hard drive is in that computer, it chain reboots. I put my original computer's hard drive in a second computer as a secondary hard drive to save the data. I assume if I put back my original hard drive into my original computer, it will continue to not work. So, now I have my data saved, "I just have a computer that doesn't let the keyboard/mice work, and a hard drive that, I think, can not be run as a primary drivem," in reference to my original computer.

[rshaffer61]

Tried to reboot it, and it got to the "windows wasn't properly shut down" screen, and my keyboard did not work for me to select "boot windows normally" so it counted down and started booting up, however, once it got past the XP loading screen, the computer just restarted. Great! Now, I'm scared. I get another harddrive I have lying around, plug it in, and windows starts booting up but my mouse/keyboard don't work.

Ok I am working off this part you posted. If you put the Original drive in then the system reboots all the time correct?
Let's try to fix this first as the other hard drive I'm sure is a drivers problem since it came out of another system I'm sure and the motherboard drivers are most likely not the same.
Can you put the original drive in and please let me know if you have a XP installation disk.

[Kelbrina]

The keyboard and (presumably) mouse do not work when the original hard drive is in either, unfortunately. Nor do they work when another hard drive is placed in. And yeah, the original hard drive chain reboots when placed in it's original case. After the loading screen with the windows xp logo, there's a flash of a blue screen with some type on it that I can not read, then it reboots.

So should I still place the original hard drive back in place, even though the keyboard and mouse do not work?

[rshaffer61]

there's a flash of a blue screen with some type on it that I can not read, then it reboots.

Hold on lets see if we can get this to stop so you can see it.

• Start your system and at the Second post screen tap on F8 to get to the Boot Menu
• Use the Arrow Keys to Scroll down to the line that says "Auto Start On Error" and highlight it.
• Click Enter to disable it
• The system should reboot and if not then do so.
• When the BSOD shows it will stop so that you can reply with the STOP ERROR and any parameters.

[Kelbrina]

there's a flash of a blue screen with some type on it that I can not read, then it reboots.

Hold on lets see if we can get this to stop so you can see it.

• Start your system and at the Second post screen tap on F8 to get to the Boot Menu
• Use the Arrow Keys to Scroll down to the line that says "Auto Start On Error" and highlight it.
• Click Enter to disable it
• The system should reboot and if not then do so.
• When the BSOD shows it will stop so that you can reply with the STOP ERROR and any parameters.

This isn't going to work. As I said in the original post, no keyboard (or mouse for that matter) will work on this computer right now. And to repeat, the keyboard's I have tried work perfectly fine on other computer's, but will not work on the damaged one.

To recap:

~Malware of some sort on computer (named Windows or Internet Protector 2010, or something like that) was found to be scanning my computer when I got back from breakfast. Turned off computer to stop this from happening.
~Started computer back up. Tried to boot into safe mode but keyboard will not work.
~Noticed that, after waiting the 30 seconds (on the screen where I am asked to choose how to boot up)the Windows loading screen/bar pop up, and suddenly a blue screen (with text) flashes for a split second, and the computer starts rebooting again (this will go on ad infinitum).
~Put DIFFERENT hard drive into the afflicted computer. Everything loaded fine and I got to the login screen, but unfortunately no mouse/keyboard will work (be it USB or "traditional" ports).
~Put OLD hard drive into a different computer as a secondary hard drive, and are being copied now so I don't lose data.

This is the situation I am in right now. Any advice that involves using a keyboard on the afflicted computer is not going to work at this point in time, unfortunately. The keyboard not working is not a driver issue with the new hard drive (or if it is, it's partly unrelated) since the keyboard would also not work with the original hard drive. From my understanding there are a couple problems here: the original hard drive is obviously not working like it should (albeit the data isn't gone) but also something is wrong with the keyboard/mouse ports. All computer's involved run XP, but unfortunately I do not have the XP install discs.

I do appreciate the effort that you're putting in though, don't get me wrong. I hope we can get this all sorted out soon, hopefully!

Edited by Kelbrina, 17 January 2010 - 05:42 PM.

[rshaffer61]

Keyboard and mouse would not be affected by a hard drive in any circumstance I have ever ran across in the past 14 years.
Do not hook a hard drive up. Does the system then use the keyboard if you click the Del key on the first screen that is black with white lettering?

[Kelbrina]

Okay, so after leaving the computer alone for a few hours, I plugged in the non-original hard drive into my computers case, and the mouse and keyboard actually worked - hooray! However, the original hard drive is still chain rebooting.

I brought the original hard drive to another computer and ran it as the primary drive. I got it to boot into safe mode. After selecting safe mode, that big list of files stopped at system32/giveio.sys, I then hit esc (I think) to bypass loading this file, which allowed me to boot into safe mode. If I do not bypass this file the computer automatically reboots. I also was able to freeze that blue screen by disabled the autoreboot on failure, or whatever, and discovered that the blue screen was the following stop error:
STOP: 0x0000007B

So, with some googling I think I have a boot sector virus possibly. One thread I saw (I stupidly lost the link) mentioned that the person had USB issues, which would explain my USB issues with the mouse/keyboard. They also had it rebooting after the XP splash screen. Also, while I was in safemode, a red circle with a white x in it was in my system tray and the following alert was displayed "Click here to protect your computer from spyware." followed by "Windows has detected an infection of spyware! It is recommended to use special antispyware... yadadadada"

So, now that we're pretty sure I've got something nasty, and the keyboard and mouse work, and I can boot into safe mode, it looks like we can go ahead with whatever programs I need to download to remove this bugger. I just don't know which !

[rshaffer61]

OK since you are sure it is a active infection then I need to send you to another forum to get the help for that.
I suggest you go to the Malware Removal and Spyware Removal Forum and run all the steps located in the
START HERE. These self-help tools will help you clean up 70% of problems on your own.
If you are still having problems after doing the steps, then please post the reguested logs in THAT forum.
If you are unable to run any of the tools then start a new topic in the malware forum and put this in the subject line...I am unable to run any malware tools

If you are still having problems after being given a clean bill of health from the malware expert, then please return to THIS thread and we will pursue other options to help you solve your current problem(s).

Add a link to this topic so that malware tech can see what steps have been taken here