Reformatting Probs

[Simon]

After many pointless attempts to fix my comp & many hours wasted trying, it seems that my machine has become so infected & full of sh!t that a reformat is (probably?) the only way of returning it to satisfactory working order.

Unfortunately, after changing the boot sequence/method in BIOS, the poxy thing refuses to boot from the opsys CD (XP Home Ed. Incl. SP 1) & merely continually suggests that I hit F1 to retry.

My technical skill where these things are concerned is (practically) non-existent, so please forgive me if this question is a little basic, but what am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Bluewave]

Please go back a bit... what makes you think your machine was infected with spyware/viruses? What were the symptoms?

So are you saying your PC won't boot from the hard disk at all now? (after changing the BIOS boot settings)

 

[Simon]

Where do I start?

Sluggish, recurrent bad things that ad-aware & Spybot cannot remove, things generally not working properly, etc., etc. And it won't boot from the hard disk, at all.

Any ideas?

 

[aarie5]

You might have a hard drive problem. My hard drive started to play up a while ago, it started making strange noises and eventually it packed in and would not boot up at all. I have a great technical fist so I gave the side of the tower next to the H D a thump and it sprang into life. According to my local pc shop adviser the HD is the only moving part in the computer and it was likely sticking. It was replaced under warranty.

:idea: Also, when I re-installed the os on the new drive I had to insert my old windows 98 disk to get it to complete as I had the upgrade disk and not the full prog, maybe that's what the F1 to retry is all about .

If the thump method works change your HD.

good luck

 

[Bluewave]

Simon, the only time I've had strange things happen to my PC (that I knew definitely wasn't spyware or viruses etc. after checking) was when the memory modules were playing up.

Turned out the manufacturer had used cheap memory which couldn't handle the heat of my laptop. The knock on effect was spurious errors, some minor, some major crashes, and inevitable bad data being written to the hard disk resulting in all sorts of errors which made it look like the hard disk was failing!

Eventually my PC wouldn't even get past the start-up screen.

The technical support department of this manufacturer said to try taking the ROMs out and pushing them back in firmly.... apparently many users have heat creep problems with memory chips whereby when they get hot, then cold, then hot again they unsettle from a good contact.

But this, in my case, did not solve the problem. I downloaded a free memory tester called Memtest86 which runs off a 3 1/2" floppy at start-up and thoroughly checks the memory, and thus I diagnosed bad memory. Replacing the memory solved the problems.

 

[Simon]

Thanks Bluewave & Aarie, I'll have a further fiddle later.

 

[oatman]

http://www.pcpitstop.com/