do I have a virus?

[37Fleetwood]

ok I have a friend who's mother just passed away and some neighbors had her computer and wouldn't give it back. they claimed she wanted them to fix it. I had originally put it together shortly before she passed with win 2000 pro. when we did get it back it wouldnt start up. it would go only so far and then re start, again and again. I stupidly put the hd in my computer running win xp and didn't come up with any viruses or anything(I use Zone Alarm). it looked like normal. I took it out and continued on with no problems for a few days and then my computer started doing the same thing. first time I was surfing the web and all of a sudden, blank. then restart. it got to the boot screen then blank, restart. oddly I thought I'd popped a ram chip so I pulled one out and it started up fine for a whole day. then same thing again. I started up another hd with windows mce and same thing. this second drive is one I use for playing around. next I tried loading a linux live cd (Ubuntu) and it worked fine. then I tried to load win xp on the play drive from a ghost image and it wouldnt load. I tried loading winxp from the cd. I did repair, I did install. every time I got a "STOP" error. then I loaded an install of Suse 9.2 on the play drive and here I am running linux just fine. I can watch videos stored on my ntfs drives and play mp3s and everything just fine. what's going on here??? does anyone know? has any one encountered this? what do I do? I have an ecs-m950 board. It can't be on the drive or it would have booted with the other drive installed. could it be in the BIOS? I'm tempted to get another board. the exact same board is available on ebay cheap. I even tried clearing the bios and changing the settings. nothing works.
please help!
thanx.
Scott

 

[imation]

Which STOP code is it? You will see something similar to 0x0000007B, The 7B will change depending on the type of STOP error. If we know the STOP code then we are one step closer to solving the problem.

Also, how many minutes are remaining when you get these STOP codes? Is it always x amount of time left, or is it different each attempt?

 

[37Fleetwood]

ok I tried again tonight. this is what the screen reads:

*** STOP: 0x0000007b (0x82087030,0xc0000032,0x00000000,0x00000000) INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

HOPE YOU CAN HELP!!
THANX.
SCOTT

 

[imation]

Hi Scott,

Thanks for the stop code. Here is what this particular website has to say about that STOP code:

0x0000007B: INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
Windows lost access to the system partition or boot volume during the startup process.

Typical causes: Installing incorrect device drivers when installing or upgrading storage adapter hardware, or a virus.

http://aumha.org/win5/kbestop.php

I am quite stumped. On one hand we have the original problem being transferred when you've initially put that harddrive in. So it could be a virus. On the other hand, you've tried another harddrive which wouldnt be infected (atleast from what I understand) and it's getting the same problem. So that rules viruses out.

Losing the boot volume during the startup process? Well, this could happen. But at the same time youve swapped in and out different drives? Not too probable. System partition? Same sort of deal. Would depend on the way the drive has been setup. And if you've used multiple drives independant of eachother then I would rule this out as well.

Have you checked that your IDE cables are firmly secured onto the motherboard and vice versa? Almost seems to me as if there's a loose connection, hence the randomness of the blank screens. Perhaps after putting that drive in and out you've bumped something. (But I would think if you've been accessing the drives in linux with no worries this isnt the case).

The last optional cause is incorrect drivers. This is a rare problem when it comes to basic harddrive configurations (im guessing you dont have any RAID or SCSI type setups), so would think this isnt too probable either.

Check your connections. If that doesn't help, try putting the harddrive in on the Secondary IDE channel (disconnet your cd drives for the time being) and check to see if it's the same deal.

 

[37Fleetwood]

ok I have used several drives and I have moved them to different positions on both cables. I also have tried booting from a live win xp disc I downloaded and it will not boot, same problem. also I went into the bios and looked at the drive configuration and when i choose search drives now it comes up with wrong paramiters. could a virus do that?
thanx.
scott

 

[imation]

I've never seen a virus that deep in my career.

I really really want to say your IDE controller on the motherboard has failed, but that doesnt make sense if you can read data fine on the drive in linux.

If I were you, I would buy the ebay motherboard and see how that goes. If it is cheap, it could save you the hassle, and if not, you know its not motherboard related.

 

[37Fleetwood]

thats what I was thinking. the new board is the exact same board as I already have so it shouldn't have any issues as far as that goes. I figure it is a virus of some type that affects either the mbr of the hard drives or it is in the bios and somehow is giving wrong info about hard drives. I have never heard of this before but anything is possible I suppose. i'm just afraid that it might go from the drives to the new mb. I have hesitated to use the disk that came with the drive because I don't want to lose the data but I might try it anyway.
thanx.
Scott

 

[imation]

If you are able to format your play around drive, fdisk /mbr will kill the master boot record. See if that fixes the problem. (if you havnt tried already)

 

[37Fleetwood]

the Seagate cd that came with the hard drive wont load all the way before it crashes.

 

[imation]

the Seagate cd that came with the hard drive wont load all the way before it crashes.

Got any floppy boot disks?