HDD Issues?

Status
Not open for further replies.

RadRacer

In Runtime
Messages
205
Location
Vero Beach, FL
My aunt and uncle are having issues with their Sony Vaio PC. They don't want to replace it, just want me to fix it. They had it looked at a few months back, and the guy told them their hard drive was going. Anyways, they've been having issues of it freezing up and being completely random at times. I put SB:S&D, aVast, AVG, and Ad-Aware on it and ran the scans. It found a bunch of stuff, fixed them all and all seemed good. But, every once in awhile, aVast will pop-up saying there's a Trojan, and we hit either delete or quarantine and it pops right back up. It won't let them do anything when it does that, and they end up having to manually shut-off the computer. Other times, the computer runs just perfect (such as now) and has no problems at all. In fact, I'm surprised it runs this nicely for a 4yr old PC.

It's a Sony Vaio, they bought it in March of '03.
Tower's Product number is PCVRX860. It's running XP Home.

2.4GHz P4
80GB Ultra ATA-100 HDD
512 RAM
DVD Burner, etc.

Would replacing the HD fix these issues? I was going to clone the current one completely using Ranish partition manager, and then merge the remaining space with the cloned partition. I was going to replace their current drive with a WD Caviar 80GB. 8MB Cache, 7200RPMs, Ultra ATA-100; nothing fancy, just something to get them going again. What do you guys think? I tried to explain the problem the best I could. It always seems to happen when I'm not there :p
 
You can try to run the scan's and when your done try system restore. Go to start,help and on the left hand colume second up from bottom select system restore and restore to an earler point. You should try to pick a date before the problem started up. This dosnt always work sometimes the maleware is in the system restore area.
The best way to get it completley fixed is to do a reinstall.
 
Ah, I really dislike Sony VAIO since I have had one once before. It should be the HDD that might be causing this problem. You might want to replace it and install a fresh OS into it.
 
Ordered a new HDD for it. Should be here Thurs, I love newegg :D

We don't have a fresh install to put on it. We do have the restore disc, but I don't think they want that. I'll double check with them later to make sure, but I'm pretty sure they don't want to use it. That would just make things too easy :)
 
lol gotta love family
my grandma does the same when i switch up her pc i have to go all out

usually ends in hours of staring and eventually breaking something

she is running pc older than her
 
it shouldn't matter what they want....do a restore. That's like a child saying they don't want to eat their vegetables...know better and do a restore.

It's likely that system is deeply infected with some hardcore trojans and cloning it does nothing but to back up the malware so that you can install it anew on the new hd.

make a backup of any extraneous data files...restore, shore up with all the security...scan the back up and then restore the data files.
 
it shouldn't matter what they want....do a restore. That's like a child saying they don't want to eat their vegetables...know better and do a restore.

It's likely that system is deeply infected with some hardcore trojans and cloning it does nothing but to back up the malware so that you can install it anew on the new hd.

make a backup of any extraneous data files...restore, shore up with all the security...scan the back up and then restore the data files.


I like your thinking :). I think I'm going to tell them to just go ahead and do a factory reset if they can, and then swap the drives, just to be on the safe side. Then, put all the protection back on it and tell them to enjoy.
 
I agree and if they want the newer OS you'll be on the phone for the next six months trying to explain how to do this and that. I built a new computer for a friends of my mom and updated her to XP and what a pain in the ars. It's been 4 years now and I still get crap from her. Not really worth the $50.00 i made for sure.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom