[johnpoiron]

Wife's laptop is a Dell Inspirion 6000 circa 2005.
It has 512 mb ram which checks out OK
It will boot from an AVG linux based Rescue disk but will not load windows at all. Cannot get to safe mode. Just a
blank screen and blinking cursor when trying to boot from hard drive.
Using AVG, found one trojan virus and removed it. No help.
OEM hard disk has been replaced with a Western Digital 250.

Any ideas?

Many thanks,
John

[Dellinsp531]

What was the name of virus?

Does the laptop have a separate partition with OS recovery on it? Or do you have a Restore CD with the OS?

Do you mean you installed a new hard drive? If you did, than you need to reinstall windows since there is no OS on. If that is the case, there should have been no virus on a new hard drive.

[LiveBrianD]

When you installed the new HD, did you reinstall the OS? I think you'll probably have an actual Windows disc for that (shockingly enough for today's times, Dell included actual Windows discs back then).

[johnpoiron]

Dellinsp531, on 14 December 2011 - 01:03 PM, said:

What was the name of virus?

Does the laptop have a separate partition with OS recovery on it? Or do you have a Restore CD with the OS?

Do you mean you installed a new hard drive? If you did, than you need to reinstall windows since there is no OS on. If that is the case, there should have been no virus on a new hard drive.

Thank you for getting back to me.

As for the existence of a recovery partition, I'd have to run the partition checker again. I believe only one partition was found when I first ran it from the AVG Rescue disk. And no, it was a PC competent friend of hers who installed the new disk, and reinstalled windows. We have no recovery disk. And BTW, the PC ran fine for probably a year with the new hard drive.

Thanks again, and best regards.

[johnpoiron]

johnpoiron, on 15 December 2011 - 12:39 PM, said:

Dellinsp531, on 14 December 2011 - 01:03 PM, said:

What was the name of virus?

Does the laptop have a separate partition with OS recovery on it? Or do you have a Restore CD with the OS?

Do you mean you installed a new hard drive? If you did, than you need to reinstall windows since there is no OS on. If that is the case, there should have been no virus on a new hard drive.

Thank you for getting back to me.

As for the existence of a recovery partition, I'd have to run the partition checker again. I believe only one partition was found when I first ran it from the AVG Rescue disk. And no, it was a PC competent friend of hers who installed the new disk, and reinstalled windows. We have no recovery disk. And BTW, the PC ran fine for probably a year with the new hard drive.

Thanks again, and best regards.

[johnpoiron]

Dellinsp531, on 14 December 2011 - 01:03 PM, said:

What was the name of virus?

Does the laptop have a separate partition with OS recovery on it? Or do you have a Restore CD with the OS?

Do you mean you installed a new hard drive? If you did, than you need to reinstall windows since there is no OS on. If that is the case, there should have been no virus on a new hard drive.

ps: Virus was a "Trojan Horse Constructor"
Thanks again.

[johnpoiron]

LiveBrianD, on 14 December 2011 - 03:32 PM, said:

When you installed the new HD, did you reinstall the OS? I think you'll probably have an actual Windows disc for that (shockingly enough for today's times, Dell included actual Windows discs back then).

Thank you for getting back to me. A friend installed the new disk after the OEM disk failed. I suspect that this disk has failed too, but have not confirmed it.

Thanks again.

[LiveBrianD]

If you boot from a linux disc, like ubuntu, can you see the HDD and access your files?

[Dellinsp531]

Ok. I assume that the new hard drive was installed and worked. After that, it stopped working. You ran the AVG and found the virus on the new hard drive.

If AVG found the virus on the new hard drive, that means that the new hard drive is working in the state that at least it can read files off it. It might be that some files were damaged that is preventing windows from starting.

Do you or someone else have Windows XP Home CD (assuming that was the OS that was installed)? If so, than use it to repair the Windows installed.

When you tried to get to safe mode, did you before Windows starts press F8? If not, than try that and to see if you can get into safe mode.

Well you can try Linux, like puppy or DSL (Damn small linux) instead of Ubuntu since they are smaller.

[johnpoiron]

LiveBrianD, on 15 December 2011 - 03:40 PM, said:

If you boot from a linux disc, like ubuntu, can you see the HDD and access your files?

Thank you for getting back to me and thank you for the tip.

[johnpoiron]

Dellinsp531, on 16 December 2011 - 05:21 AM, said:

Ok. I assume that the new hard drive was installed and worked. After that, it stopped working. You ran the AVG and found the virus on the new hard drive.

If AVG found the virus on the new hard drive, that means that the new hard drive is working in the state that at least it can read files off it. It might be that some files were damaged that is preventing windows from starting.

Do you or someone else have Windows XP Home CD (assuming that was the OS that was installed)? If so, than use it to repair the Windows installed.

When you tried to get to safe mode, did you before Windows starts press F8? If not, than try that and to see if you can get into safe mode.

Well you can try Linux, like puppy or DSL (Damn small linux) instead of Ubuntu since they are smaller.

Thanks for getting back to me. Thanks for the F8 tip. I was trying F1, F2 and F10 with no luck. Thanks also for the info on Linux Puppy and DSL. Are these freeware by chance? That I could get from say Cnet? As for the OS disks, we may have them, and yes, wife's laptop has XP Home. I have XP Professional on this machine.

[Dellinsp531]

Puppy, DSL, and Ubuntu are free. The have their own site that you can get it from:

http://puppylinux.or...t%20Release.htm
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download

[LiveBrianD]

Good point - right after you see the manufacturer logo, keep pushing F8 until you get boot options, and select safe mode.

[johnpoiron]

Dellinsp531, on 16 December 2011 - 11:24 AM, said:

Puppy, DSL, and Ubuntu are free. The have their own site that you can get it from:

http://puppylinux.or...t%20Release.htm
http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/
http://www.ubuntu.co...ubuntu/download

Thank you for that info.

LiveBrianD, on 16 December 2011 - 12:31 PM, said:

Good point - right after you see the manufacturer logo, keep pushing F8 until you get boot options, and select safe mode.

Thank you for that info.

[SuperSamuraiBlades]

John, I think the virus might have hurt your wife's boot files which would explain why her OS wouldn't boot. You can repair the OS files by booting off the WindowsXP disc and loading up your bios settings, type the letter R to choose the recovery console and in the command prompt screen, type CHKDSK /R and press enter, it will scan your system for errors.

If this does not work then you will have no other choice but to re install Windows again. Be sure to back up and save any important files before you do wipe out your hard drive.

[alishathomaz]

Perform the following tasks::

Scan your computer with an antivirus
Apply De-fragmentation on your system
Delete all temporary files
Run disc clean up
Fix registry errors.

[johnpoiron]

Thanks again to everyone for getting back to me. Re-install of Windows fixed the problem.

Now that everything is re-loaded, I would like to save an image of the hard disk ... just in case something like this happens again.

I would like to create a bootable flash drive, then create the image on the flash drive.

Is this possible? Or must I get another hard disk for the image?

[LiveBrianD]

A flash drive doesn't have enough space for a disk image. Download easeus todo backup, burn the recovery CD (you can also create a thumb drive for this, you don't need a very big one), and make a disk image on an external hard drive or a secondary internal hard drive. You will need as much space as you have used on your drive for the image. When you want to recover, burn the recovery CD, plug in the external hard drive if that's what you used, select the disk image, and wait a while, at least an hour (it depends on how much data you have).