[Frustrated_]

I don't know if it's a virus that caused this, so please be patient with me.
I'll give you my system specs to start off with:
Windows Vista Home Version
Norton Internet Security 2010 fully updated
2.6 GHz e-machines with 1 GB RAM

The other night I was surfing in Firefox and had a song playing on YouTube, a java chat opened in another tab, and was just doing general searches on Google under a third tab. Everything was going fine (as it should) when suddenly the mouse pointer froze and would only move intermittently. It became so bad that I couldn't do anything. I had to shut down the computer manually and do a hard reboot.
The problem then was that the system would not do anything past the Vista boot screen where you see the moving line at the bottom of the screen. It went to a black screen and then no further.
I tried the Repair Windows option on subsequent attempts at rebooting but that had no discernible effect and it did the exact same thing as if I had selected to boot Windows normally (which was nothing).
I then tried hitting F8 when booting and have tried every option on the advanced boot menu (safe mode, last known good, etc.) to no avail. It wouldn't boot into anything other than a black screen.
When I tried to go into safe mode, the system would load all the modules but then hang on crcdisk.sys and do nothing else.
I had even tried using my Norton CD to boot from but all I got was a message that "Windows is loading files" and then it's back to the same black screen.
I also tried my recovery disc that came with the computer but that's as useless as using the Norton CD (same results).
I couldn't get a command prompt or anything.
When it hangs I could hear a very faint and short bzz, click, click from my hard drive (remember this).

The only thing that worked was me putting my old Windows XP disc in and booting the machine off that. I was able to format and then install XP. Once I did that, I was able to use my Vista recovery CDs and reinstall Vista.

The only concern now is that I cannot do a chkdsk (other than read-only mode). It gets as far as stage 5 (verifying free space) then stops around 63% and I get that faint bzz, click, click from the hard drive and nothing else happens.

Does anyone have any insight as to what could have caused all this? Thanks in advance!

 

[joeten]

Hi and welcome to TSF first back up your data,then go to your harddrive makers support site and download the diagnostic tool,burn it to a disc use imgburn for this,next make sure your cd\dvd dive is selected as the first boot device,then boot from the diagnostic and test your hdd

 

[Frustrated_]

Thanks for the fast reply. With the documentation that came with my computer, it only states this for the hard drive: 160 GB 7200 RPM SATA II with 8 MB Cache. How would I determine the manufacturer of it? The e-machines website turns up the same information.

 

[Frustrated_]

I checked the BIOS and found it there. It's a Hitachi drive, so I went to Hitachi's website and made a disk image of their disk diagnostics tool and launched it.
It said there were one or more corrupted sectors on the drive, so I tried the option of repairing the sectors but it came back with the following response:

Failure code: 0x70 defective device
Technical result code (TRC) 70007636

Does this essentially mean the hard drive is destined for the trash heap?
Also, do you know how this could have happened? Could it have been a virus that somehow snuck through Norton or do you think it's strictly a hardware issue?

 

[Frustrated_]

Anyone? :sigh:

 

[joeten]

Hi to answer your first question I 'am afraid you will need to get a new drive,your second question is more difficult to answer in any definitive way hdd 's can go at anytime with no rhyme or reason,if you have data on it you need you could try using a linux distro to boot from in live cd mode and try to move it to a external drive or a usb device
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...backup-files-from-your-dead-windows-computer/

 

[Frustrated_]

Thanks for the info, joeten. All my data was wiped out when I installed Windows XP (I really had no other option at that point, since the Vista recovery CD and Norton CD wouldn't work). I'm currently working off a clean installation of Vista that I was able to do once XP was installed.
Buying and installing a new hard drive seems easy enough. I just hope it wasn't anything more malicious than a simple hard drive failure that caused this.

I know that during the summer we had numerous power outages one week while I had my computer turned on. Is it possible that the damage began then?

 

[Frustrated_]

Another question: Isn't it odd that my Vista recovery discs and Norton disc wouldn't work to boot the computer up but my Windows XP disc did?
Also, I'm using the same computer right now although it is running slower than normal. Is that a symptom of hard drive issues?

 

[joeten]

Hi since your using the drive at present try running chkdsk on it and see what it tells you use the cmd line option and the /r switch http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/how-to-use-check-disk-in-windows-vista/ I would be lying if I said the power outages where the cause but it cannot be discounted as a possible contributor,as to the reading of your media that's a puzzle if the disc where damaged or the laser dirty then that could affect the install,the drive if damaged would make it a little more difficult when the read write processes are running since the head scans the disc for the files or space to write too or read from the more spread out the longer it takes

 

[Frustrated_]

I tried the chkdsk /r after reinstalling Vista and that's when it froze in stage 5 at around 63%.
There's nothing wrong with the Vista installation DVDs or my Norton CD, since they both worked fine once I got XP installed, therefore the DVD drive is fine also.
What could have caused nothing to work except the Windows XP installation disc?

 

[Frustrated_]

I should also mention that, about a week prior to this all happening, I tested Norton Internet Security on the Shields Up! website and it came back as having several ports "closed". Normally all ports should be stealthed, so I thought this was weird. Since I was finally able to reformat and reinstall, the test comes back as all "stealth".
I'm so frustrated by all this. Despite Norton never having detected any malware, this has occurred. There is obviously a hard drive problem, since the Hitachi diagnostic tool stated the drive is defective, yet I can somehow sit here and go on the Internet and post this message to you. The system is slower at startup than usual and sometimes does little odd things (like the screen might flicker at startup or the Windows jingle at the very beginning will have a note catch and repeat occasionally).
Could all this nonsense be caused simply by a failed hard drive? I'm still baffled that the Vista Recovery and Norton CDs would not work and that none of the F8 options at startup would work (safe mode always got stuck at loading crcdisk.sys), yet the Windows XP CD allowed me to format and install XP.
Please advise.

 

[aliance]

run killdisk on the HDD then install xp and never use norton its the worst program ever made. install avg free and you should be good to go.

 

[Frustrated_]

I'll wait to see what joeten has to say, but I'll comment that I've had Norton on my computers for the past six years and never had an issue with it.

 

[joeten]

Hi aliance makes a good point and killdisk would completely wipe your drive,but that would as he points out need you to reinstall a os,this is where it could get interesting since up to now you have not been able to get your vista disc to work in the dvd drive,did you burn the discs on this machine I only ask as it has been known for the write speed that the disc was made at to cause a issue sometimes burning at a slower speed helps,oh I just remembered you did get it to work once as to norton it has on many occassions been the cause of problems with windows os,as you have a serial num for it you could test out the machine without it, use the removal tool from norton and use avg or similar and restart windows firewall and see how it behaves you can always reinstall if there is no real difference,it really is a case of trial and error with this issue,I had a closer look at your hdd error and it may well be a bad sector and from what I could find a low level format is supposed to fix it well you have gone through a format so lets hope that it has helped although I still have a leaning towards the drive failing sometime soon

 

[Frustrated_]

Hi joeten.
The Vista recovery DVDs are from the factory and they do work now. The only time they wouldn't work was when this crash happened.
I ordered a new hard drive and it just arrived early this afternoon, so I guess I'll install it in a bit.
Are you saying that malware could have caused all this or do you think it's strictly a hardware issue? I'm still baffled that the XP disc allowed me to reformat and install, whereas the Vista and Norton discs had no effect at that time and neither did any of the Advanced Boot Options (when I hit F8).

It's probably important to mention that whenever I do a regular (read-only) chkdsk now, it comes up clean. When I do a chkdsk /f, it freezes at stage 5.
The disk diagnostics tool still tells me the drive is defective (despite the read-only chkdsk results).

 

[joeten]

Hi as I mentioned in my previous post you have a bad block on the drive and this would be the main cause of your issue,I also said that after a bit more digging that a low level format was reckoned to help overcome it but in my opinion your drive will fail fairly soon,the fact you managed to reformat and boot from the drive with xp and not vista is puzzling but may be the block causing the issue has been isolated by the format with xp and yet chkdsk may see it but I can't explain it I 'am as puzzled by that as you

 

[Frustrated_]

Re: Windows froze then could not reboot

Well, I got the new 500 GB hard drive installed and it's working fine.
It seems like it may all have been for naught, since I noticed there was an "Erase Disk" feature with the old drive's diagnostics tool. Since the diagnostics tool couldn't fix the bad clusters, I figured I would try that prior to destroying the old drive. I didn't think it would do anything, since XP allegedly reformatted the entire drive when I used that disc.
Lo and behold, after I ran the "Erase Disk" function and ran the drive through another full diagnostic, it now says that the drive is error-free and is giving me a code of 0x00, which means it's fine.
I guess I'll hang onto that drive and maybe put it into the extra bay in the case (although I'll need an extra SATA power cable for that).

 

[joeten]

Hi I 'am glad your back up and running but keep a eye on that drive I hope it will be fine and extra storage is always usefull

 

[Frustrated_]

Thanks for assisting me through this. I wonder if the old drive suddenly failed because of this new "optimization" feature built into NIS 2010. I know that to do a disk defrag, you first need to ensure the disk is clean (chkdsk). With Norton, you don't really have a choice in the matter about this, since it'll "optimize" (a.k.a. defragment) your hard drive any time the computer goes idle, from what I can tell. It makes me think the hard drive needed to have chkdsk run before Norton did it and that once Norton did it, the failure was a matter of time.

 

[joeten]

Hi your welcome you may be correct but as I do not use norton I have no real way to state either way what it does, I keep clear of norton as I have seen it cause many issues
but I leave others to choose for themselves for the most part