Hi there, i am new to this website and i dont know if i posted this in the right place, but the machine i have is a dying machine and has the ultimate problem ( its corrupt or something)

almost 2 years ago, I was getting like 4 different types of BSOD ( like the NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, PAGE FAULT and something DUMP, i dont exactly remember each one) and I spent hours a day researching (the internet and talking to people on it) and talking to dell and them telling me new way to save my computer. I was pretty sure that i got malware or a trojan in my system and was getting increasingly smart

ive done (from what i can remember, but i know theres more ive done)

msconfig, run /chksdk, mcafee scan (most up to date), adware scan, system restore, reformat (this is the most promising one, but doesnt work), stress test (but all signs turned out negative),and i try to reinstall via disk (windows xp home), but it wont b/c for some reason, it cant find any drivers or something so it tells me to quit.

I was stumped, i talked to about 10 different Dell techies and they all told me to do a different test/diagnosis and none of them worked. Like i said, reformatting was the most promising, when i do it ( i sometimes double bag it and do it 2wice in a row) it starts off like a brand new comp, but then my programs start to crash more and more frequently(mcafee, internet, any other programs... most programs keep saying that they are corrupt). It eventually got so bad that my safe mode wouldnt start up and it would just turn straight to a blue screen. I felt like Dell was trying to avoid me shipping it back and trying to run out my warrenty time or something. So i gave it to 2 of these Tech Wizards my dad knows, but they couldnt find out a solution. They were the same people who fixed my other badly broken comp that wouldnt even start up, just stay on loading windows. So i gave up on it for awhile b/c that was like months of stressing over my once called "brand new" comp and i could not get any real help b/c this virus thing was far too advanced i guess.


Now.. its 2 years later (roughly, in present time this was last week) and i asked my Dad just to get my computer fixed for my grad present. He bought the 2 year extended warrenty ($240) for it about a year ago because he didnt want to give up on it. He talked to Dell and they told him to reformat (ugh, here it goes again). So he thinks he fixed my computer (i dont know how he was able to reformat that dead comp though) but i kept telling him that it will slowly die day by day. Now, i saw it dying and I saw the newest Mcafee i had to buy (around $80) FAIL and not only fail to find the virus, but the next day stop working and kept getting like and error that it had to stop protecting me. Now... i didnt know what to do, my programs say they were corrupted again and everything started shutting down for me... but yesterday i remembered that I had a brand new Windows Vista CD i can clean install my comp with. Well i tried it out last night, i even reinstalled it twice because vista had to put my old files into a seperate folder and save it for safe keeping, but i deleted them then re-reinstall to make the current new windows files the old ones. After i did that, today it seemed slightly normal, i downloaded the new mozilla then the new adware trial and then mcafee again. Then today my Mcafee started getting blocked,errored, and forced to stop protecting me. My adware 2008 pro couldnt even detect a critical object.

so ATM, i am awaiting my blue screen i guess, or my eventual internet to crash. So far i spent $2,000 on my comp, plus an additional warrenty, plus the newest Mcafee at the time, then an additional 2 year warrenty (which i remember was $240) and the newest Mcafee ($80) up to date. A clean install of windows through the CD couldnt even stop this trojan/malware/ i dont know what.... at 1st i thought bad RAM but the diagnostic/stress test 2 years ago turned out negative. I know you guys are really smart with computers and could hopefully help me out that would save my life. If you cant, do you think i can get a refund of my Mcafee (it obviously did not satisfy me) and an exchange of my computer?

If it's still under warranty you could probably get it replaced by Dell, but that would be all about getting the right person on the phone and saying the right thing. If you pursue this be sure to stress that they system works fine for a few days after a new install and then fails, otherwise they'll just reinstall OS and send it back to you.

To me it sounds like a bad hard drive, only thing I could think of that would cause:
A. trouble with formatting and installation
B. Gradual degradation of the system.
If it were any other hardware problem you'd expect it to be responsive to how long the system has been running (or completely random) but a gradual corruption is most likely HDD issue.

I'd suggest two things:

Find an Old hard drive and install on that, see if it degrades the same way.

or

Let it run for a couple days without an internet connection, this would COMPLETELY rule out viruses, since there would be no opportunity to become infected.


As far as McCafee, they're not going to give you your money back for buying software you didn't need. It's not their fault you didn't have a virus. I'd suggest just using it on another computer if you need it somewhere else (or this one if you get it fixed) or just completely scratch McCaffe and go with AVG Free or Avast.

If you send it back to Dell for a repair and they don't properly test it you'll have A LOT of leverage to demand a replacement, or at least escalate to higher level techs and get some special attention.

thanks, heres something too i tried out right now too.

http://us.blizzard.com/support/artic...707&rhtml=true

it shows my drivers are most likely corrupted (maybe thats why reinstalling Windows Home didnt work b/c it couldnt find a driver, or the corruption wouldnt let me detect it)

thanks for the response but im not sure of 2 things


how do i install another hard drive? do you mean install vista on another hard drive? b/c im using vista on my labtop for 1 or 2 months now and its ok, the CD i got came from its box. i bought a brand new external hard drive recently too if that helps

and im confused on how closing my internet will rule out viruses b/c i thought if you catch a virus, its in your system





edit: more info if it helps. i havent gotten a blue screen so far today or my internet has yet to crash... but we will see tomorrow.

also i cant even chkdsk anymore, when i issue run->chkdsk, the command prompt opens up relaly briefly and then closes

nm, i had to scan disk and restart and chkdsk booted up

ok heres what i did


I have a toshiba external hard drive and i ran a game program from it


it worked and was running smoothly for a couple of hours where as my C drive instantly crashed. So this external hard drive worked but then started to crash like 2 hours later. I HOPE the corruption did not spread to my external hard drive, but I think this proves

not only is it a bad Drive, but i also might have a virus still in it or somewhere in my computer
I have done like a 4 hour long thorough chkdsk/scandisk and it found nothing wrong with my comp

I NEED MORE HELP, PLEASE NEED MORE PEOPLE TO RESPOND!!!

External hard drive should be fine, file corruption shouldn't spread from one drive to another, and if there were a virus infection on it it would be benign unless there's an OS installed or another system accessing the file. A virus scan would remove any infected files from a data drive without incident.

If the file crashed immediately off of the C drive, but ran smoothly for a couple hours from the external I'd say the issue is with the C drive, the crash when running from external was probably due to unrelated system files.

If you're comfortable and familiar with drive partitioning you could install the OS on the External drive as a test (this should work, but I know older dells could be temperamental about these things. Not sure about 06 models) if you're not up for putting a seperate partition on the external drive see if you can scratch up a HDD from an old computer, plug it in (ideally using the cable from that systems incase it's the cable on the new system that's damaged) and install windows on that side.

im not familiar with drive partitioning, but i would gladly do it if i knew how to do it and install the OS on my external drive (my external has 160gb)

as for the old computer HDD, i do have a really old comp, but its still a dell (dell celeron like 10 years old). Are you saying like opening it up and taking out the HDD? how would i come to find it, unplug it, and install it if you dont mind? >.<

The new drive is very simple, open the old computers case and find the drive. It will be a 3-1/2 inch drive, meaning it's roughly the side of a floppy disk drive, 3.5"x5(ish)x1. unplug the cords and hook it up to their counterparts in the new computer. You'll probably want to remove unhook the current drive to avoid any confusion during the install.

For installation on the external drive you'd need to use a third party program, there are free ones but I'm not really familiar enough with any of them to give a recommendation so I'd suggest searching this site and google for "disk management" or "partition resize" to get a suggestion.