Calling all geeks!! Need help!! on the Peoria.com Forums

I took the kids computer to a Marriott yesterday and something weird happened to it through the WiFi. I ran a virus scan on it and it says its clean, but when I boot it up I get this screen which is about 15 duplicate cascaded windows:

http://tinypic.com/r/2uyrtqq/6

It says "A write command during the test has failed to complete. This may be due to a media or read/write error." The system generates an exception error when using a reference to an invalid system memory address."

Then I get this screen:

http://tinypic.com/r/10yj24x/6

It has a critical error in the lower right hand corner.

Any suggestions?

If I delete out all the windows, the computer actually browses normally but I keep getting the cascading windows and critical error messaging.

Thanks in advance!

those errors appear to indicate a problem with the hard drive. could be that it was dropped, or kicked during travel, or it might be a fault with the hard drive itself.

i'd make any backups you need while you can, then get it professionally serviced. if it's under warranty contact the manufacturer.

Yikes. Thanks.

you're welcome. and for future reference, you can take screen shots by pressing the "print screen" key on your keyboard, then save them in an image program like Paint. easier than using a camera to take a picture

Cool

Thanks again!

That's a virus:

http://www.spywarehelpcenter.com/smart-repair-virus-

EDIT: Don't follow the instructions on this page, I think they're trying to sell you a fix. You should be able to fix it for free.

how?

For $90 I'll tell ya.

Kidding. Download Combofix, it should knock it out:

http://www.combofix.org/download.php (do NOT click on the big advertisement at the top of the page)

Right click and save where it says:

link1: ComboFix.exe 4.1MB ( From bleepingcomputer.com Rick- Click,Save As, ComboFix is FREE, DO NOT download ComboFix.exe from sites other than BleepingComputer.com )

Save that on your desktop. Then run it, follow the installation instructions. If it warns you about any existing antivirus, ignore it. If it asks you to download the Microsoft recovery console, say no. It should pop up a blue window and run thru 50 stages. It may reboot the computer at some point in the middle When it's done it'll pop up with a full screen text page detailing what it deleted and a bunch of other stuff. It can take 15 minutes or more to fully complete. You can close that text window and carry on with life. If that doesn't work, I'd reboot into safe mode and rerun it.

**This advice is not warranted in any way. Combofix is not recommended for novices, though it's pretty darn easy to use.

Looks like Malware. Let me know if you are successful at removing it.

Hmmmm.... the nice thing about it is, since its the kids computer, there aren't any valuable files. I could always zap it out if I had to. If it was my computer I'd be

Sometimes re-installing (Zapping) is easier than undoing the mess malware creates. Although a majority of them are very simple to fix.

Follow up - later that day my computer completely fitzed out. I looked for a restore disc and couldn't find it so called Toshiba. Apparently now the laptops don't come with a recovery disc but tech support had me hold down the 0 button as it booted up. That put it into the recovery mode. A few minutes after the recovery mode was initializing I got an error message that said my Drive C was corrupted. So Tape I think your guess was right. Somehow the whole hard drive was kaput. Since it is under warranty I can send it to a repair facility in Kentucky and if I pay shipping they will repair it free of charge. Yuck! At least they'll repair it. Thanks for all your help guys.

thanks for the update.

Thanks for your help too Pock. I sure was hoping to get it fixed tonight

SMART is hard drive technology that monitors the HD health.
When you start getting SMART HD warnings, your HD is on it;s way out

What is weird though is that it was just sitting on top of a desk when that warning came up. It wasn't bumped or jostled. Could a virus have caused that? I was at a Marriott that amazingly, had an open internet connection. I didn't need a log in or password or anything. I thought it was strange at the time.