I am using my fathers laptop at the moment (and hate typing on it).
I have Windows XP Media Edition, mid 2005 computer. HP.
A few days ago I had noticed when I did some searches on yahoo, that when I clicked the results, I kept getting redirected to ad sites. I did Spy Sweeper scan overnight, and nothing was found. The next day the redirects were still happening. So this time I did a MalwareBytes scan & it found a trojan. So went ahead and deleted & rebooted. The redirecting seemed to have stopped, until later that day or the next I noticed it was doing it again. At that time I then did Temp File Cleaner by old timer tools (I believe I have that right). It removed a lot of crap for me.
Seemed good. Then I noticed that some of the time, it would redirect me again - I would hit the back button, and re-click the link, and then sometimes it would go to where it was supposed to. I did another MB scan, nothing found. I did another temp clean, which only took seconds. Then I believe that night I did a Spy Sweeper scan, nothing found.
I think it was the next night, I shut the computer down & wanted to do a restart. Turned it on, and it brought up the normal Windows blue screen, and instead of going to the XP logo/loading page, I got a black screen with a blinking white line in the top left corner. Manual shutdown, restart. Same thing. Did manual shutdown again & restart - went through fine. Was on for a while then shut down for the night.
Now it gets worse. Turned it on in the morning, and it started the black screen thing again. Then it would start telling me "A disk read error occurred" press ctrl alt del to restart.
I would try that, wouldn't get any where. I then cleaned out my tower & set back up.
Still problems. I have been able to push esc to pull up boot menu. This is when I noticed a problem.
Under Boot Menu, I was missing my hard drive.
It lists my CD-Rom group. Other times, it would list my Maxtor hard drive. Of course when it is not there, it will not load to login. At other times it would show it there & sometimes I can get it to fully boot. I have only been able to successfully logon about twice now since this started.
The last time I was successfully on, windows loading took longer than usual (the XP screen with the blue loading bar beneath it). When I was logged on, I was trying to moving photos onto my external drive. I successfully moved 10 GB of a folder, and when I proceeded to do a 9 GB one, it froze about 1/5 or so of the way through. I could move my cursor, and the 'moving files' animation was still moving, but the actual move of files was not going up in percent, and I could not click on anything. Task bar would not come up (I have it auto hide), and ctrl alt del did nothing. I let it sit for probably close to an hour, and nothing. I manually shut down.
Since then, I made it to my logon screen once, and after clicking to log on, it froze in the same way - could move my mouse/cursor, nothing else. Never made it to my desktop, just froze on the login screen.
I can also pull up my system setup by pressing F1. Just like in boot menu, if the hard drive is not being recognized, it does not show up in the main menu - when it did it would be there, and once it listed it with scrambled letters (did this once in boot menu too - listed hard drive, but strange assortment of letters/symbols).
I took snapshots with my digital camera if someone wants to see.
I cannot seem to boot in safe mode either, I try pressing F8 and no luck. I am at wits end. I would take it to Best Buy, but do not have the funds to spend that kind of money right now.
At one point when trying to boot, I also got the message:
Master Boot Record error
press a key
-pressed
then:
disk boot failure
insert system disk & press enter
Problem is, I cannot locate my disks right now - I looked last night, and will try looking more today. Computer was bought at Best Buy, so yes, all programs are legal copies, etc.
Oh, and several times when trying to boot - it will do that "A disk read error occurred press ctrl alt del to restart" over and over again - it will restart, and go to the blue screen then back to that, or just a plain black screen with the blinking white line - it doesn't say to do ctrl alt del, but I do that & it restarts.
Well, I think I've covered most of it, sorry for being so long, but just want to try and give all the details.
I would hope I can save my photos & files....
Thanks for your time & help. I wish I could remember the name of the trojan MB found, but unfortunately, can't get on to even look at what it was!
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