Does a virus go beyond the hard drive? How could it survive a new hard drive transplant and formatting? Why didn't AVG catch it?

Did you copy any files from the old HD? You could have moved the virus....


But if you didn't I'm not sure....

Yes, I did. But only a small fraction thus far. How to find this virus?

Depends on the virus... My dad had one that the only scanner that found it ended up triggering a BSOD

Rick, Dave says you may also be having RAM issues....

Thats true. Pull all of the RAM out, restart the laptop and give it a try. I have extra RAM for a Dell 600 here at the house if you need some.

Sounds like it is somethign wrong with the laptop, not a corrupted OS.

Hey Rick - my D600 seems to have a fatal error on the hard drive. I got it to the point where I could run a chkdsk and it found a bunch of errors. After it fixed them I defragged hoping to fix it for good. Well, it's now in a reboot loop where Windows fails to launch. Most forums I've read suggest this is just another sign the hard drive has failed.

If you want to try out your hard drive in my machine you're welcome to it. Maybe between the two of them we can put together one working laptop. I'm done messing with this one and have ordered a new laptop.

I just don't want to dump any more money into this. I can live with it as it is, though it's frustrating. If I've replaced the HD and reloaded Windows, what the hell else could be the problem?

Redbeard, any idea which version of AVG is compatible with the Windows disk you sent me? It won't support the latest version. And I'm thinking I really need a good virus scan.

The three things that are easy to try/fix are (1) reload OS, (2) replace hard drive, (3) replace RAM.

You should first protect your data - sounds like you started that by putting the old drive in the USB enclosure. But, even if that old drive appears to be working, it can fail at any time - so you need to copy the key data from that old drive to a fresh drive, so it lives in at least 2 places.

Next, do (1) (2) (3) on the old laptop. Sounds like you've done (1) and (2). I wouldn't spend much money or time on the old laptop, not when you can buy a netbook for $300. Definitely don't screw around trying to diagnose motherboard problems, etc, on such an old machine. Your time is worth lots more.

Guys, pay attention to backups. My iMac is automatically backed up multiple times x day to an external drive. I've decided that's not enough, that external drive can fail, the house can burn, someone could break in. So I will be also backing it up 1 x month to a second external drive that I'll keep in the office (thanks to stomach and sapporo for their advice.)

Maybe I've had bad luck, but in my star-crossed experience hard drives start failing after 2-3 years - this is my last 10 years' experience across my PCs, my Macs, and the TiVo. Seems like I'm replacing at least one hard drive a year. And the hardware has a finite life. PCs last me 4-5 years. Macs last me 5-6 years. Seems like stuff "should" last longer, but for me it just hasn't.

Oddly enough, in the 1990s I seldom had a problem w/ hard drives failing. I don't know if that's just random/luck.

So, I take it that the cmptr was stable for hours (?) during a fresh OS/HD install. ...only went bad after going online?

Did you transfer a bunch of files coincidentally with going on line?

Did you run the windows updates right after install?

I'm no expert here, but I have heard of BIOS viruses. I don't know how you wipe those. ..But, also expect that the install would have crashed it during OS install if that were the problem. ..same for a hardware overheat prob. hmmm.

Yes, I did transfers a bunch of files. I had to at least get my wireless card driver transferred to get online. But I did a lot of others too.

I've been considering using one of those online backup services. Seems like a lot of peace of mind for $50 a year. But I'm worried about security there and especially gov't. intrusion.

Man, it's really freezing up again and is hard to boot up, even to get to safe mode. WTF? I'm gonna have to do all this again, but need to get a through virus scan of everything before I transfer (again) to new HD.

I've never had anything but problems with virus scan software. Nowever, It seems that Microsoft got pretty serious about tightening security with their updates.

...the first thing that I would do (online/new OS/HD) is run all/any security updates.

And the LAST thing I would do is transfer ANY files from the old hard drive to the new drive.

Ok, I need to start all over. How do I format my new hard drive? I tried following the instructions online and can't even make that work. Just tried to reload the Windows OS disc, went through the whole 40 min. process and my computer looks like it did this morning, all files and programs still there. How do I wipe this damn thing totally clean?

On my netbook, I have Linux installed on another partition, and I can choose which partition to boot from. Like that, if my windows7 OS went south, I could still boot on linux and figure out if it is hardware or software problem.

To wipe the HD clean, reformat it.

Any good online directions for reformatting my machine?

It can be done with the windows installation CD.

Or read here: How to Format a Hard Drive With Windows XP | eHow.com

This nightmare never ends. I wiped it clean again and reloaded Windows last night. Just booted it up and hooked up my external hard drive just so I could transfer over the Dell wireless driver to get online and download Microsoft updates. That froze the damn thing again! WTF? There is NOTHING on this computer but the Windows OS CD that Redbeard sent me and the Dell wireless driver. It freezes up now and is almost impossible to reboot. What to try next?