[maximem]

Hi everyone,

I've got a fun case here for whoever is willing to take it on.

See what led us to this point here: http://www.geekstogo...error-messages/

Basically, I got a google re-direct virus. I tried to fix it. Lots of fixes wouldn't work. I probably went a bit too far, and suddenly I had problems with my video card. Blue screens of death haunted me at night. Overall, everything was pretty messed up, it wouldn't let us run antivirus scans, and we decided to do a clean install. That should work, right?
Apparently, it's a lot more messed up than we thought! I have re-installed windows twice now.
My backup files are also odd and corrupted (not all but some) on an external hard drive, even when I try to copy to a different computer.

With my clean install, I can't run windows update, I download firefox and it continuously crashes, and then blue screens of death show up. I can usually run it for a bit using last known configuration but still get to a blue screen at some point. The error messages are always different on my blue screen of death, I can give details if it would help! Basically the system crashes, gives me a file that caused it (always different) and starts to dump physical memory and I have to manually shut down.

Thanks to anyone that's willing to help me out! This laptop was working fine last week, and although it's about 5 years old now, I hope it has a long life ahead of it!

Thanks,
Maxime

Edited by maximem, 17 January 2011 - 01:57 PM.

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Hi Maxime my name is Ron and I will be trying to help you correct this issue.
I went through the malware topic quickly so bear with me as I have you run a few diagnostics to see what we may be dealing with here.

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, try the Hitachi DFT CD Image version of the software

Thanks to Broni for the instructions






If you have more than one RAM module installed, try starting computer with one RAM stick at a time.

NOTE Keep in mind, the manual check listed above is always superior to the software check, listed below. DO NOT proceed with memtest, if you can go with option A

B. If you have only one RAM stick installed...
...run memtest...

1. Download - Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip)
2. Unzip downloaded memtest86+-2.11.iso.zip file.
3. Inside, you'll find memtest86+-2.11.iso file.
4. Download, and install ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/
5. Insert blank CD into your CD drive.
6. Open ImgBurn, and click on Write image file to disc
7. Click on Browse for a file... icon:



8. Locate memtest86+-2.11.iso file, and click Open button.
9. Click on ImgBurn green arrow to start burning bootable memtest86 CD:



10. Once the CD is created, boot from it, and memtest will automatically start to run. You may have to change the boot sequence in your BIOS to make it work right.

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.


The running program will look something like this depending on the size and number of ram modules installed:




It's recommended to run 5-6 passes. Each pass contains very same 8 tests.

This will show the progress of the test. It can take a while. Be patient, or leave it running overnight.



The following image is the test results area:



The most important item here is the “errors” line. If you see ANY errors, even one, most likely, you have bad RAM.

[rshaffer61]

Hi Maxime my name is Ron and I will be trying to help you correct this issue.
I went through the malware topic quickly so bear with me as I have you run a few diagnostics to see what we may be dealing with here.

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, try the Hitachi DFT CD Image version of the software

Thanks to Broni for the instructions






If you have more than one RAM module installed, try starting computer with one RAM stick at a time.

NOTE Keep in mind, the manual check listed above is always superior to the software check, listed below. DO NOT proceed with memtest, if you can go with option A

B. If you have only one RAM stick installed...
...run memtest...

1. Download - Pre-Compiled Bootable ISO (.zip)
2. Unzip downloaded memtest86+-2.11.iso.zip file.
3. Inside, you'll find memtest86+-2.11.iso file.
4. Download, and install ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/
5. Insert blank CD into your CD drive.
6. Open ImgBurn, and click on Write image file to disc
7. Click on Browse for a file... icon:



8. Locate memtest86+-2.11.iso file, and click Open button.
9. Click on ImgBurn green arrow to start burning bootable memtest86 CD:



10. Once the CD is created, boot from it, and memtest will automatically start to run. You may have to change the boot sequence in your BIOS to make it work right.

To change Boot Sequence in your BIOS

Reboot the system and at the first post screen (where it is counting up memory) start tapping the DEL button
This will enter you into the Bios\Cmos area.
Find the Advanced area and click Enter
Look for Boot Sequence or Boot Options and highlight that click Enter
Now highlight the first drive and follow the directions on the bottom of the screen on how to modify it and change it to CDrom.
Change the second drive to the C or Main Drive
Once that is done then click F10 to Save and Exit
You will prompted to enter Y to verify Save and Exit. Click Y and the system will now reboot with the new settings.


The running program will look something like this depending on the size and number of ram modules installed:




It's recommended to run 5-6 passes. Each pass contains very same 8 tests.

This will show the progress of the test. It can take a while. Be patient, or leave it running overnight.



The following image is the test results area:



The most important item here is the “errors” line. If you see ANY errors, even one, most likely, you have bad RAM.

[maximem]

Thanks Ron, I really appreciate you taking this on.
I'll be home in a few short hours and will get started on this.

For my RAM, I think I have two sticks, one of 500 and one of 1GB. I added the 1GB myself a couple years ago and bought it for cheap, so it's definitely possible that it would screw up. In your instructions below, it talks about a Section A + B, yet I seem to only see B which refers to a situation when you only have one RAM. Is that the one you want me to follow?

[rshaffer61]

Actually since you are obviously familiar with the inside of the system I would suggest starting with option A by taking out the 1 gig and trying the system with only the 512. If that boots and with no BSOD then try switching to the 1 gig and see if it happens.
If still no problems it would be safe to say it is not the memory but I would suggest to test the two sticks using the memtest86 program just to make sure.

[maximem]

Alright, so here we go.
I have a Fujitsu drive, and I downloaded the right hard drive diagnostics tool. The problem is that it's an .exe file, and I'm not sure how to boot from that. I've got it on a CD but I'm not sure how to get it to boot on startup! Any ideas?

[maximem]

And I'm currently running the tests on my first 512 of RAM, that'll run tonight and hopefully I can do the other one in the morning and have good results for you

[rshaffer61]

Download the SeaTools cd ISo for Dos.
Then follow the instructions on how to burn a ISO file.

[maximem]

Perfect thanks, I'll do that in the morning.

FYI, 5 clean passes with the 512.
Just inserted the 1GB, and within seconds there are already 600 errors!!! I think we might have found the culprit!! I'll let it run overnight and give you a report in the morning once I run the other check

[rshaffer61]

Just inserted the 1GB, and within seconds there are already 600 errors!!! I think we might have found the culprit!! I'll let it run overnight and give you a report in the morning once I run the other check

No need to continue. The 1 gig is your culprit.
Take it out and run the system on the 512 and I am 99.999% sure other then maybe a low memory, virtual memory or system resources error message you will have no problems.

[maximem]

Haha yeah there was a good 12000 error messages! haha
Any reason it would crap out so intensely? And my older RAM is still fine?
I still wanted to run the hard drive diagnostics just to make sure everything else was ok.
Now, should I do a clean install of windows again? We haven't really done much but lots of things were messed up (like I couldn't access microsoft update) and I'm not sure those will be fixed by removing the ram. I'll try and see how it goes! I had to use the older version of Seatools (i couldn't access my mouse with the new version, troubleshooted it on the net)
I just ran the short scan, and it had errors and recommended I run the long scan, which is going on right now!

[rshaffer61]

So if I'm understanding you the memory 1 gig shows 12000 errors which means it is definitely bad.
Age of memory has no bearing on it lasting longer or not. It is a electronic component that just went bad.
Now you are saying the HD is showing errors also?
Wow how ironic that the two things we check first is showing issues.
Reinstalling the OS on a bad HD will not fix the errors as any information saved in the bad areas of the hd will be corrupted. Replacement is the only solution with that as well as replacing the memory.
I would suggest the following for the memory.
Go to HERE and run the Crucial online scanner.
This will give you the exact memory configuration for your system.
You do not have to buy the memory from there, but write down the information and if you need assistance in purchasing the upgrade memory GTG can assist with suggestions also.

[maximem]

Sounds good for the memory, I think that's where I scanned in a few years ago when I needed to buy more.

If the hard drive is messed up, is that really something I can replace easily? Like opening up my laptop? I've done it for RAM but that was pretty easy, I wouldn't even know where my harddrive is (but of course I would google it ) I'll have to look at prices and see if it's worth it. My laptop is about 5 years old and I would rather not put too much money into it. The scan's at about 50% so I'll keep you updated!


Clearly, after being so unlucky in our malware fixes, it was just meant to be that we were lucky in our first harware scans haha

[rshaffer61]

Yeah a laptop HD is located under a compartment much like the memory. It should be marked as the HD also. One screw and you take out the hd and put a new one in. The problem comes with reloading the OS since most likely it is on a recovery partition on the bad hd thus making it basically worthless to you.
That being the case you would need to borrow a installation disk of the same version your system was originally installed with...Home, Media or Pro.
You can then use your key to activate it but it has to be the OEM or Retail version you had originally installed.
A OEM key will not work on a Retail version and vice versa.
A generic laptop hd replacement tutorial is located HERE
Replacement drives you can start HERE to see the capacity and size you may want. Make sure you are getting the right interface be it SATA or IDE.

[maximem]

Okay thanks for the advice, I will definitely look into all of this.
The scan finished with 2 errors and the following message: "Error(s) detected on NON Seagate Drive. It is suggested tha tyou contact the maker of your disc drive for more information"

Is there any other hardware worth checking? Since the first two found errors? If I have too many things to replace then I would maybe consider buying a new laptop, but if it's just hard drive and RAM that wouldn't be so bad!

Thanks again

[rshaffer61]

You could try the Toshiba hd diagnostics. Even though the instructions say there is none I did manage to find one located HERE
It's made by Hitachi and you want the CD Image version.