Trojan causing Disc Read Error?

[Primus462]

A coworker of mine brought her laptop in for me to look at today. She said last night she was online and a bunch of windows started popping up and then her computer shut down. Now, when you power it on, after the initial Toshiba screen, it displays the "Disc Read Error."

Do you think a virus caused this? Or is the HDD bad? I am going to us Hiren's when I get home, but I was curious your opinion.

I know the coworker was on MySpace, and my brother's fiancé got a trojan from MySpace last week on MY PC!

Thanks!!!

 

[rforce]

My professional opinion is that the Disc Read Error is just what it is, a read error. That implies that the file being accessed is not responding in a reasonable amount of time.

If the data on the drive is critical, don't turn it on any more.

Based on the situation above, the drive could be in the process of having a head crash. The sooner that it is evaluated by a professional data recovery lab, the better the chances of recovering the data at a lower price. If the free price quote is too high, you are able to seek other options. If the drive is deemed unrecoverable by the professionals, you benefit by not wasting any of your time.

If the value of the data is not $300 or more, you can always try connecting the drive as a slave in another system and attempt to backup the data. If the system doesn't detect the drive or you run into any problems, you will need to seek professional support.

Good luck!

 

[sailer]

This is why good anti-virus programs are needed. MySpace seems to get them a fair amount. Anyway, this sounds more like a combination of viruses. Likely a bug got in that is causing all the pop-ups, but that one, though annoying, probably isn't serious. Ad-Aware can probably take care of that. The serious one is what caused the computer to shut down, and that is likely a wrom. A worm eats a bit of code here, a bit there, and finally eats something that kills the whole computer. My son brought home one of those years ago on a disk that he got got from a friend that was supposed to have a couple games on it. Anyway, a worm can be present for days, sometimes acting only when a program is started and lremaining dormant the rest of the time. If it is such a virus, the only cure is usually to re-install the OS from scratch.

Other than that, things to check on a laptop start with the batteries. Then try to start the computer in "Safe Mode" and try to diagnose it. If you can get it running, do a virus scan. If you have an "Emergency Start-up Disk", try using that to get it running. Hiren's, as you mentioned, might do the job as well. Another thing to try if you can after you get it running is to go to Symantec/Norton and run have them run a virus scan. I've done that in the past for a former girlfriend's computer. She had over 500 viruses on hers. I installed Norton on her computer and got rid of everything bad. Problem was, she disabled Norton because it kept giving her virus warnings and two weeks after that, the computer died again. That's one of the reasons she's a former girlfriend. Take note, Norton is only one of many anti-virus programs around. Some are better than others. You also might try one of the free ones for a start in looking for problems.

Most likely the hard disk isn't bad, its the stuff that got onto it that's bad. Most likely a re-install of the OS will cure what ails it if efforts to get rid of the viruses fail.

 

[rforce]

I agree with Sailer that it could be a virus or a trojan; though, I would say that there is a 1% chance that a virus is causing the problem. The number of times that I see a drive that is no longer recoverable or the damage has been compounded because the user or technician assumes that the device is physically sound. It makes more sense to backup the data first, completely test the hardware to verify that it is sound and then deal with the software problems. If the hardware is bad, trying to remove a virus that may or may not be there will be the most frustrating experience you will ever have.

 

[sailer]

True enough, the hard disk could be the problem and only extreme measures will get the data off of it. That's one of the big reasons behind the mantra "Back up everything". If the disk is truly bad, then hard thought is needed to determine whether its worth it to pay for a disk recovery serive or just toss the disk and start over.

At the same time, I've seen many hard disks with a "Disk Read Error" that were simply corrupted code in the OS. Probably around 10 cases of corrupted code to every bad disk. That could be because of the numbers of people who go into MySpace, download music files from suspect sources, or go into porn sites or other unregulated sites with either no anti-virus programs or inadequate free anti-virus programs.

 

[SpudTECH]

Run a Repair Install. that usualy will fix most virus corrupted issues/ or it will tell you that the disk is to dammaged to repair.

 

[Primus462]

Thanks for the advice. I used Hiren's Boot CD and ran McAfee and F-Prot. After that, I was able to boot the PC. Then it was a matter of using Spybot, CounterSpy, Adaware, EMCO, Avast!, etc to start removing all of the CRAP on her PC. It is running much better. As far as I can tell, the HDD is fine. Thanks again for the advice!!!!

Adam