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Help!

Grader4me

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2006
Messages
1,792
Location
New Brunswick, Canada
I'm having problems with my Daughters laptop. I'm not sure if she picked up a virus or there is something wrong with the hard drive. Sometimes when I boot up a black background shows and it does a scan on the disks. It says "one of your disks needs to be checked for consistency(NTFS drivers). It goes through the scan then says "receiving orphaned file WMIA DAF.ex.

Once it goes through that it will finish booting up and everything looks normal...until I try to open a program etc..then it freezes up. It won't let me do a system restore..as a blue screen will appear and tells me windows is being shut down automatically to prevent harm to the computor..then shuts down. I tried to do a virus scan and it will freeze up within a few seconds (same as any of the programs I try to open)
I tried to do a system restore and a virus scan in "safe mode" but the same thing happened. I also tried going to the "add remove programs" to remove any unwanted prgrams, but it wouldn't work either..freezes up
This laptop has windows vista.
Help!!

On edit..should mention that it appears to be continually loading all the time as the loading icon is spinning (doesn't stop) when opening a program.
 
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Squizzy246B

Administrator
Joined
Sep 9, 2005
Messages
3,388
Location
Perth, Western Australia
Occupation
Digger Driver
Your hard drive is toast. Get the machine to like a DOS prompt or start, then Run and type in "CHKDSK"

here:

Chkdsk (Chkdsk.exe) is a command-line tool that checks volumes for problems. The tool then tries to repair any that it finds. For example, Chkdsk can repair problems related to bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, and directory errors. To use Chkdsk, you must log on as an administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

You can also run Chkdsk from My Computer or from Windows Explorer.

You will need to reboot to get the whole job done (chkdsk will run next time the computer starts.

Its your only hope, otherwise its toast.
 

RonG

Charter Member
Joined
Dec 2, 2003
Messages
1,833
Location
Meriden ct
Occupation
heavy equipment operator
Spinrite to the rescue if you can find a copy.I can't count the drives that I have saved with it.GRC.com will get you there if you want to buy it.Ron G
 

Grader4me

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2006
Messages
1,792
Location
New Brunswick, Canada
Your hard drive is toast. Get the machine to like a DOS prompt or start, then Run and type in "CHKDSK"

here:

Chkdsk (Chkdsk.exe) is a command-line tool that checks volumes for problems. The tool then tries to repair any that it finds. For example, Chkdsk can repair problems related to bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, and directory errors. To use Chkdsk, you must log on as an administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.

You can also run Chkdsk from My Computer or from Windows Explorer.

You will need to reboot to get the whole job done (chkdsk will run next time the computer starts.

Its your only hope, otherwise its toast.

Thanks Squizzy..yeah its toast..tried the CHKDSK in safe mode and it did scan but could only do it in read only..thats what it said. It found errors but was unable to fix them. Tried it on the normal boot and typed it in the run box and it froze up. Next time I tried it after rebooting it flashed for a second then that was it...wouldn't even scan..
Darn laptop is only about 18 months old..:Banghead

Sympathy is all I can offer but you have it.

Thanks Mitch! lol

Thanks for the info Ron!

On edit...could this be the work of a virus?
 
Last edited:

Squizzy246B

Administrator
Joined
Sep 9, 2005
Messages
3,388
Location
Perth, Western Australia
Occupation
Digger Driver
Unlikely to be a virus....more likely its a Dell

Sorry couldn't help.

I do know how you feel though...my HD crapped out awhile back...damn thing only lasted 8 1/2 years!...bloody Seagate Rubbish:rolleyes:
 

artificer

New Member
Joined
Jun 21, 2010
Messages
1
Location
Gold Coast
I had a Dell Inspiron 6000 & the screen went out in <12 months. Australian purchase went out in the US no warranty.....consequence no more Dell.
 

nickbowers

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2009
Messages
272
Location
Victoria, Australia
dell are one of the best computers around, i manage hundreds of them.
The warranty is the best in the business, computers fail for various reasons at no control to the computer manufacturer, in laptops it is mainly because they get moved around.

Nick
 

Monrad

Well-Known Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2008
Messages
66
Location
New Zealand
Occupation
Monrad Earthworx
Hey there, before you go and buy another harddrive why not try to reinstall operating system from fresh just to make sure it's not some corrupt files.
And yeah I too vouch for spin right its amazing software, can take ages though 10hours plus sometimes. Sorts outs the bad sectors and reorganises them to other areas, well something like that. :drinkup
 

Grader4me

Senior Member
Joined
Jan 11, 2006
Messages
1,792
Location
New Brunswick, Canada
Thanks for the info Monrad! I'll give that a try today and let you know how it goes. Its my Daughters laptop and she has been using ours so I've been in no rush to get it fixed.
 

Leon Phelps

Well-Known Member
Joined
Oct 6, 2010
Messages
86
Location
PA
dell are one of the best computers around, i manage hundreds of them.
The warranty is the best in the business, computers fail for various reasons at no control to the computer manufacturer, in laptops it is mainly because they get moved around.

Nick


LOL.
I fix hundreds of them too. Dell uses slowest and cheapest components. Motherboard speed, memory speed, and video boards is where they chince the most. You hear about the fast processor, but learn about mother board bus speed the hard way.

Michael Dell single handedly is wrecking this world. Next time you call Dell tech support and cant understand the guy tell me how great they are.
 

R Glover

Active Member
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
29
Location
Texas
Always back up & have back up's to your back up's. Dont matter what brand it is, fact is the computer will die at some point, usually when you really need it.
 

Puffie40

Well-Known Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2010
Messages
208
Location
Southeastern B.C.
Why is the HDD toast?

Unless the laptop has been thrown around, I can't see a 18-month old HDD crapping out. (Their general lifespan is around 5 years)

what might be wrong is the partition is damaged and a reformat/reinstall is in order. If you get a USB to SATA bridge (Ebay link), you should be able to remove and hook the drive up to another computer and see if you can examine the drive's contents.

Get the HDD brand and model and go to the manufacturer's support website. They will have some tools to check the integrity of your HDD a little bit better than Microsoft's Check Disk utility can.
 
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nickbowers

Senior Member
Joined
Oct 17, 2009
Messages
272
Location
Victoria, Australia
LOL.
I fix hundreds of them too. Dell uses slowest and cheapest components. Motherboard speed, memory speed, and video boards is where they chince the most. You hear about the fast processor, but learn about mother board bus speed the hard way.

Michael Dell single handedly is wrecking this world. Next time you call Dell tech support and cant understand the guy tell me how great they are.

Im a school computer tech and manage 8 schools in Australia, i buy dells at all of them. Out of the 200+ we have in the last 12months i have logged two jobs with dell, one of them being when a student knocked it off the bench.
I think thats pretty good
 
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