zgrowler2

Machine specs:
SONY VAIO NR385E
Intel Core 2 Duo T1550 1.83GHz
2GB RAM
Vista Home Premium SP1, default settings.

AV: AVG 8.0
AS: AVG 7.5
Firewall: Windows

Starting last night, my computer started getting opaque windows whenever I clicked within one, or to "X" out of one, or to open a link. Start Menu became unresponsive. Ctrl-Alt-Del hangs at the shiny Vista background that says "Preparing security options" or something to that effect, mouse is stuck as Hourglass/blue circle thing. (the machine was fine prior to this)

Reboot in Safe Mode, run AVG AS + Task Manager to check Up Time and processes, locks up halfway through scan. (roughly 12min)

Reboot in Normal Mode, run AVG AS + Task Manager and leave it overnight (it freezes completely, mouse and all, in roughly 20min)

Reboot, startup takes forever, CHKDSK pops up and runs, time is spent "Repairing the unreadable security descriptors data stream." More freeze. Ctrl+Alt+Del produces a black screen.

Reboot, startup is normal, CHKDSK finds and fixes one (1) bad cluster. Up time: roughly 40min.

When I go into Hibernate, the machine reboots and displays the "recovered from unexpected shutdown" dialog as if I had hard reset it.

Multiple reboots later, I'm still getting the opaque windows (not sure what triggers them, but opening/closing windows seems to do it sometimes) and eventual taskbar lockup. Can't end processes through taskmgr. Ctrl+Alt+Del before opaque windows/freeze works fine, Ctrl+Alt+Del after opaque windows/freeze produces black screen, sometimes with "Failure - security options" dialog. The machine is fully functional before the freezing starts; I'm still trying to see what triggers it.

According to http://www.vistax64.com/vista-perfor...eate-dial.html, this has happened to more than a few people. Suggestions thrown out included Checking for conflicting AV programs (I have none unless Windows Firewall turned on me) or replacing the HDD (hardly practical, plus I have no effective method of backing this one up since the DVD burner is on the laptop).

I have tried both AVG and CCCleaner, but neither can finish a scan.

This could not have happened at a more inconvenient time; all my notes for college are on the laptop and not being able to access them is a major pain. Any ideas?

edit: System Restore may work, but IO don't know if I have any recent points. My machine may or may not have been making the scheduled restore points.

dai

if you have 2 versions of avg installed remove the old one as they will conflict with one another
also only have one firewall running

zgrowler2

I was under the impression that AVG 8.0 by itself did not include Anti-Spyware, but maybe I was mistaken. Doing that now.

EDIT: Will CCCleaner also conflict? I can easily reinstall that, so I'll take it off too.

dai

ccleaner will not conflict but never use it to do any registry cleaning
v8 has anti spyware

zgrowler2

Can't uninstall AVG 7.5 in Normal Mode; the green progress bar behind the file directory loads all the way to the red "X" and freezes. I'm booting up in Safe Mode now, I think. I clicked Safe Mode; it loaded all the files and rebooted. I'll post any progress.

zgrowler2

Attempting to uninstall in Safe Mode freezes the computer whenever the progress bar in the Programs window gets about 25%. Ctrl+Alt+Del gets a black screen, only things visible is the "Safe Mode" text in the corners and the build number.

UPDATE: Managed to uninstall AVG 7.5 in Normal Mode by going directly to the uninstall file.

dai

as that made a difference

zgrowler2

No dice...froze at up time 15:47. I figured it was working, guess not.

I can try using GPARTED to switch to the recovery partition and back up to a restore point. My machine is supposed to make those daily. I'll do that next.

NOTE: GPARTED reports at least 3 bad sectors on the hard drive.

"ERROR: This software has detected that the disk had at least 3 bad sectors.

WARNING: This disk has bad sector..*omitted*..we suggest making a full backup urgently by running 'ntfsclone --rescue...' then run 'chkdsk /f /r'on Windows and reboot it TWICE! Then you can resize NTFS safely by additionally using the --bad-sectors option of ntfsresize.

Unable to read the contents of the filesystem!
Because of this some options may be unavailable."

Would a defrag fix this (assuming it finished w/o freezing)?

Still aiming for a restore point.

zgrowler2

Deleted roughly 25GB of files (140GB partition) to make defragging faster, then downloaded Auslogics Disk Defrag and ran a defrag. Defrag hung after roughly 52K files. Vista couldn't load most folders after that, and froze after 90min., so I rebooted and I could access folders again. At this point, I want to make the drive last as long as possible and back up everything on it before calling for a replacement. I'm still under warranty (only had the thing two months) so that's good. Thanks for all the help.

dai

bad sectors can rapidly multiply
vista does not like the auslogic defragger

zgrowler2

Ugh...right now my plan is to call Sony and get the thing replaced. In the meantime, I have a 2.5" hdd enclosure and the internet cafe at my college has dvd burners on all the machines. I'm going to try and transfer/burn as much as I can. As far as necessary files go, I have +/-35GB of videos, 12GB of music, my Documents folder is roughly 1GB, and there's somewhere around 3-5GB of FruityLoops files (a digital audio workstation) that I need to recover. The machines in the cafe use Roxio to burn and support DVD+/-DL. I think if I can find 4-5 more DVD-Rs and the hard drive behaves itself I can salvage all necessary files. I won't be able to get around to it until at least Friday afternoon.

dai

that's a lot of burning

zgrowler2

Yes. Yes it is. Unfortunately, I don't see another method of salvaging my data. Time to invest in a backup HDD for me!