off topic help! any computer braniacs on here.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 07:03

I've just had a complete mare. My home PC's hard disk looks like it may be irretrievably corrupted. I got a virus on it some months back called ??rvices.exe, one of the hardest to get rid of, it took me a month to find out how to remove it, but it looks like by then it had done it's damage.

The hard disk has been getting corrupted all the time, and now I cannot boot the machine at all and get the dark blue warning screen of doom. I've tried running the disc scanner to no avail, it seems to take forever I left it for two days and it had only done 28% of the disk check, and some stupid pudendum in my house unplugged the machine!

I've been meaning to buy an external hard drive to back my work up, but sadly I've left it too late, and now my machine is a dead duck.

Is there any sense in doing a window's XP repair, will that help?

What I am trying to find out is what the best way of getting the data off of there is.

I was considering buying a brand new hard drive, installing XP, and then trying to set up the additional drive as a slave and copying all of the data directly across, but I am wary of fornicating up my new drive.

There is several years worth of work on my old disk drive, including a load of artwork I just finished producing, and I would be absolutely gutted if I lost it.

Any suggestions of what to do to retrive this data, without getting ripped off by some wanker at a computer store?

Does anyone understand what the fornicate I am talking about and have any sensible suggestions that don't involve buying a whole new PC.

Priff · Post by **Priff** » 13 May 2005, 07:10

Firstly, don't panic.

Try to get a boot disk made. (floppy or CD).
If you can boot up from the disk and examine you hard drive, you can see what's there and what isn't.

You may have to access your bios to make sure your floppy/CD drive is before the hard-drive in the boot sequence.

I got a b1tch virus about 2 months ago, so I know your pain. Although I didn't have years of important stuff on it.

If you have access to another machine, creatinga boot floppy or boot CD should be no problem.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 07:16

Is that so I can boot into dos?

There's so many bloody files on there, tracking them all down could be quite difficult from dos. I guess that's the best way of seeing whether or not the files are still there, I get the impression a lot of them are corrupted as this is what the diskcheck keeps saying, there's loads of 'bad clusters.'

Once I do that, presuming they are still there, what's the best next step.

I'm thinking of gradually building a new PC, so if I buy a brand new hard disk, that can be one of the components for the new PC, and will allow me to continue working in the meantime....

Appreciate any help anyone can give me, this is a fornicating disaster if I lose all that work, serves me right for not backing it up.

Goz · Post by **Goz** » 13 May 2005, 07:37

James, your idea of setting your trashed disc up as a slave or secondary disc on a new pc was fine, this should enable you to pull what you need off the trashed disc.

You can also get operating system boot CD's these days, and as a last resort IT magazines quite often have adverts for data recovery firms that can even go to the level of disassembling the drive and performing data recovery from the disc itself.

So I wouldn't worry too much, you'll get your work back one way or the other...

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 07:51

Right ok then, so I guess I buy a brand new Hard Drive and a windows XP installation is in order. Please god I can get the data off of the old drive, I did manage to knacker one hard drive so badly that it wouldn't even allow me to get the data off.

Cheers for calming me down, I've killed two computers in the last 6 months, although neither of them were new machines, the previous one was a PII 350 Mhz which I'd had for 8 years. Time to get a proper machine.

BunglesFingers · Post by **BunglesFingers** » 13 May 2005, 08:43

The master/slave disc idea should work fine. I've done it with a mates knackered laptop drive that was full of viruses and would no longer boot up. You basically just need another computer to hook your old drove up to, or a new drive in your current machine, with Windows on it. You may need a cable to do the job and there are loads of websites out there explaining how to do it.

I found one problem involving some of these bastard viruses, sometimes they can affect the BIOS and other setting on the computer itself and it never really recovers properly, crashing etc. If the machine is not too old/battered you may be ok.

Post by **John** » 13 May 2005, 08:46

I would suggest not trying to boot into your present hard disk. If the file system has become corrupt you could be losing files every time you use it.
Install an operating system onto a new disk and then connect your old one to the system backup your data onto the new disk and then reformat the old one.
As a stop gap you can use knoppix http://www.knoppix.org/ to boot your machine and access your files.

REAL_DEAL · Post by **REAL_DEAL** » 13 May 2005, 08:52

Dynamite Dean Phillips · Post by **Dynamite Dean Phillips** » 13 May 2005, 09:35

Before you consider forking out on new equipment, try the Windows XP System Restore feature, which should be found at:

Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore

Choose from one of the earlier system check point dates there. Doing this wont touch the files and programs you have on your machine, it just restores the configuration and system files back to an earlier date, when hopefully your machine was working the way you wanted it! if it doesn't do the trick, start panicking.

P.s you can also start windows xp in safe mode, where it loads up with the minimal set of drivers. As your machine is starting, repeatedly hit F8 until a menu comes up. choose Safe Mode from here. When it laods, you should be able to access your files and stuff there. Again, if your computer wont start in safe mode, then start panicking.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 09:45

Ding_Ding wrote:The master/slave disc idea should work fine. I've done it with a mates knackered laptop drive that was full of viruses and would no longer boot up. You basically just need another computer to hook your old drove up to, or a new drive in your current machine, with Windows on it. You may need a cable to do the job and there are loads of websites out there explaining how to do it.

I found one problem involving some of these bastard viruses, sometimes they can affect the BIOS and other setting on the computer itself and it never really recovers properly, crashing etc. If the machine is not too old/battered you may be ok.

The thing which worries me, is that in doing so, I may transmit a virus to my new hard disk, and end up with the same problem all over again.

Watch out for this ??rvices.exe virus, it is a real bastard. It is a virus which uses windows registry files to piggy back on, and it evades deletion by changing it's name. Your virus scanner finds it, but when you order it to delete it, then it says it is not present.

the only program which seems to deal with it is hijack this, because it shows up as a browser hijacker. It also acts as a trojan, adding plenty more problems to your machine. It also uses windows prefetch so when you delete it, you have to turn off system restore and clean the prefetch log. It has completely bumfucked my machine.

I've got XP professional, which keeps preventing me from booting the machine and keeps saying 'to prevent further damage to your machine, windows XP has halted the boot.' It looks like it may be best to wait until I've sorted out the new hard drive before doing anything else.

I'm going to be lost without a computer to work on...

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 09:47

Dynamite Dean Phillips wrote:Before you consider forking out on new equipment, try the Windows XP System Restore feature, which should be found at:

Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore

Choose from one of the earlier system check point dates there. Doing this wont touch the files and programs you have on your machine, it just restores the configuration and system files back to an earlier date, when hopefully your machine was working the way you wanted it! if it doesn't do the trick, start panicking.

P.s you can also start windows xp in safe mode, where it loads up with the minimal set of drivers. As your machine is starting, repeatedly hit F8 until a menu comes up. choose Safe Mode from here. When it laods, you should be able to access your files and stuff there. Again, if your computer wont start in safe mode, then start panicking.

Yeah, I know about system restore, problem is, I cannot even get windows to boot. Even safe mode doesn't work, and even if I go to last known configuration, it just goes back to doing the disk check, which seems to take forever. It took 8 hours to do 28% of the whole disk, which means the disk must be really badly fried.

BunglesFingers · Post by **BunglesFingers** » 13 May 2005, 10:22

Yeah I know what you mean about not wanting to mess up a new hard disk. I put one in a previously infected laptop and it is very fragile and will crash very easily. I only use it for occasional surfing and it is 3/4 years old with plenty of mileage.

If you could get hold of another old (working) HD and use that for the data transfer, then virus check it and put it back where it came from. The people who charge £200 per hour for data recovery generally do the master/slave thing, although they probably have very good safeguards against viruses.

Priff · Post by **Priff** » 13 May 2005, 10:25

jamesmcdonnell wrote:
Dynamite Dean Phillips wrote:Before you consider forking out on new equipment, try the Windows XP System Restore feature, which should be found at:

Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore

Choose from one of the earlier system check point dates there. Doing this wont touch the files and programs you have on your machine, it just restores the configuration and system files back to an earlier date, when hopefully your machine was working the way you wanted it! if it doesn't do the trick, start panicking.

P.s you can also start windows xp in safe mode, where it loads up with the minimal set of drivers. As your machine is starting, repeatedly hit F8 until a menu comes up. choose Safe Mode from here. When it laods, you should be able to access your files and stuff there. Again, if your computer wont start in safe mode, then start panicking.
Yeah, I know about system restore, problem is, I cannot even get windows to boot. Even safe mode doesn't work, and even if I go to last known configuration, it just goes back to doing the disk check, which seems to take forever. It took 8 hours to do 28% of the whole disk, which means the disk must be really badly fried.

Your XP installation disk is also a boot disk. It will load up off itself, then offer you an option to install XP or restore the har-drive version.
Depending on the state of your hard-disk, you could choose to restore from a known point. You can even manually restore to square 1 (just after XP install). It's pretty easy to do (I did it myself).

However, if you do have viruses on you hard-drive, they will be activated and spread by continually using the drive. Not so much from just reading the drive from a Anti-Virus secured new drive.

Do invest in some anti-virus software as a matter of priority. Also, download spybot (for free, although you can donate). A personal firewall is recommended also.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 10:33

Yes, I've already done a repair from the boot disk already, bypassing the initial repair screen, and then choosing the second, which leaves all files intact. However, when I tried it this time round, there was no option to repair, only to do a clean install, which would erase all the documents and settings files where there are some files I need.

I think it's time to give up the ghost and just buy a fecking new hard drive. It's only a 14gb one anyway, and I can just reformat it, though apparently that doesn't neccessarily sort things out with this cuntibollocks virus incredibly enough.

Post by **John** » 13 May 2005, 10:36

Download knoppix and boot into it, rescue your data, ie
upload your files to gmail / burn them to CD etc

Format your disk and re-intstall microshite windoze.

jamesmcdonnell · Post by **jamesmcdonnell** » 13 May 2005, 10:45

Thing is, how am I going to download anything when I cannot get into windows? I guess I will have to get my flatmate to do it and burn it onto his

Respect the shadowy figure of Mr shepman for an unexpected bit of advice from the blue.

thanks everyone, sounds like I may yet be able to salvage my precious years worth of work.

silkov · Post by **silkov** » 13 May 2005, 16:26

I'm not a pc expert but from what I have heard from friends to whom things like this has happened to your best bet may be to take the system to someone who can retrieve the data thats on your harddrive.... perhaps even PC World would do it. A freinds computer completely blew (smoke and everything!) yet he was still able to retrieve most of the files on it.

Dynamite Dean Phillips · Post by **Dynamite Dean Phillips** » 13 May 2005, 17:01

silkov wrote:I'm not a pc expert but from what I have heard from friends to whom things like this has happened to your best bet may be to take the system to someone who can retrieve the data thats on your harddrive.... perhaps even PC World would do it. A freinds computer completely blew (smoke and everything!) yet he was still able to retrieve most of the files on it.

lol@smoke and everything. Nice one

Matchfixer · Post by **Matchfixer** » 13 May 2005, 18:00

James I feel your frustration - the same thing has happened to me before and I didn't feel settled until it was fixed. Fortunately I did have some of the stuff backed up on disks.

After you get option to reinstall Windows can you not search Dos for the files you want and copy onto disk or CD? (I don't know but just a suggestion)

Just a note in future - a good thing to do is to have two e-mail accounts and post your work from one to the other and store it. That way you can acess it from any internet terminal when you need it and you don't have to rely on carrying disks around. Doesn't help now I know but...

Good luck anyway!