Do you ever feel your not being told everything?

[Cogman]

So, I just got an phone call from my sister "My computers broke." First off, I hate trouble shooting, but where it is family I try to be a little more respectful. Anyways, She says that here husband was using the computer, then it crashed and now when it start up it shows the "windows crashed with an error, start normally, safe mode, last good conf"

So I ask, What was he doing before it crashed. "He was just chatting to some friends". "ok, tell me everything he was doing." He was chatting to some friends late at night, he opened yahoo, then it crashed."

Now, I guess it is possible that the boot sector has become corrupt along with a few drivers making boot up impossible (they say it will reboot whenever it is started up). but I have my serious doubts. They haven't been doing windows update or anti-virus updates so my guess is a virus. However, im skeptical that it is one that magiclly appeared from the depths of nowhere, I told them to contact HP and see what they have to say about it, or to try to just use the recovery disks on their own.

So am I right to be suspicious of the activity that was going on? My gut instinct tells me that the husband was looking at something he didn't want his wife to know about.

 

[compuwiz1]

what are they running, Windows98? That needs to be upgraded, for starters.

 

[apac]

My gut instinct is that it's Windows and shit kind of unpredictable sh!t happens all the time.

 

[GenHoth]

He was looking at pr0n, downloaded something that gave him the virus -> crash

 

[Cogman]

Windows XP. I have never had anything like this happen to me on windows XP, further more, I find XP to be miles more stable then any previous windows generation.

if it was Win98 or ME then my suspicions would be much less. but it is windows XP

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: GenHoth
He was looking at pr0n, downloaded something that gave him the virus -> crash

mm, kind of the gut feeling I get but I can't be sure. I guess another crash like this will happen soon enough if it is the case.

 

[wheresmybacon]

"it crashed" I just love that. How did it crash? Screen-freeze? BSOD? Black-screen? Power down?

Have fun with the troubleshooting. Family and SO's are the only one that get my services free.

Remember, as soon as you touch it if anything goes wrong with it ever again you'll be the first to be called.

 

[DaveSimmons]

"Patients lie"




House MD season 3 out on DVD now! This post brought to you by ViralMarketingSpamCo LLP

 

[savvy]

"pr0n" is the answer many times. :\

 

[compuwiz1]

system restore, ftw.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: hungfarover
"it crashed" I just love that. How did it crash? Screen-freeze? BSOD? Black-screen? Power down?

Have fun with the troubleshooting. Family and SO's are the only one that get my services free.

Remember, as soon as you touch it if anything goes wrong with it ever again you'll be the first to be called.

lol, luckily they live about 300 miles away from me. so Im not going to touch it any time soon . I think it was a restart crash, (not a freeze crash). I didn't actually investigate there.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

ACtually, this happnened to my friend about 2 weeks. ago. She just opened Yahoo in IE and BOOM, computer crashes and shuts down. She turned it back on, and it got stuck on the Windows Booting scree/got to desktop where it was running at the speed of a P2. I scaned the computer with 3 differant Av programs, and found over 2 dozen viruses. I cound't get 2 of them out no matter what I tried, so I had to format.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: compuwiz1
system restore, ftw.

not so simple, they are 300 miles away and can't get to a gui interface. Might be trivial to explain the commands, but I really can't be bothered to search for the system restore commands from the console.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
ACtually, this happnened to my friend about 2 weeks. ago. She just opened Yahoo in IE and BOOM, computer crashes and shuts down. She turned it back on, and it got stuck on the Windows Booting scree/got to desktop where it was running at the speed of a P2. I scaned the computer with 3 differant Av programs, and found over 2 dozen viruses. I cound't get 2 of them out no matter what I tried, so I had to format.

Interesting, maybe it is related (as the story does match somewhat) the only difference is that they are not able to get into the windows gui at all. so I think it is messed up beyond saving at this point.

 

[xchangx]

Originally posted by: Cogman
Windows XP. I have never had anything like this happen to me on windows XP, further more, I find XP to be miles more stable then any previous windows generation.

if it was Win98 or ME then my suspicions would be much less. but it is windows XP

You serious? I see it all the time. boot off the xp cd into the recovery console, run fixboot, fixmbr and run a check disk.

That should fix it.

 

[Descartes]

Happens all the time. I'm in business process consulting, and I have to wade my way through a series of assumptions made by people before finding out what they're actually trying to say. In my experience, people articulate a problem in a manner that makes the most sense to them, and when they do so they often include a lot of incorrect assumptions that they've made; in the worst cases, the person will actually even ask a specific question as they've convinced themselves of the solution. You only realize their error after spending time trying to solve their Gordian Knot.

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: xchangx

Originally posted by: Cogman
Windows XP. I have never had anything like this happen to me on windows XP, further more, I find XP to be miles more stable then any previous windows generation.

if it was Win98 or ME then my suspicions would be much less. but it is windows XP

You serious? I see it all the time. boot off the xp cd into the recovery console, run fixboot, fixmbr and run a check disk.

That should fix it.

humm in all the XP computers I have had I have never seen this. What file system are you using? I insist on NTFS. I actually don't know if they have an XP OEM cd as they bought the computer from HP (dang companies like HP don't like giving out OEM disks). As posted above, I live far enough away that I can't just pop down there and fix everything.

 

[hanoverphist]

Originally posted by: Cogman

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
ACtually, this happnened to my friend about 2 weeks. ago. She just opened Yahoo in IE and BOOM, computer crashes and shuts down. She turned it back on, and it got stuck on the Windows Booting scree/got to desktop where it was running at the speed of a P2. I scaned the computer with 3 differant Av programs, and found over 2 dozen viruses. I cound't get 2 of them out no matter what I tried, so I had to format.

Interesting, maybe it is related (as the story does match somewhat) the only difference is that they are not able to get into the windows gui at all. so I think it is messed up beyond saving at this point.

sounds like a boot error, i had a brand new server2k3 do that to me right after i finished installing stuff on it. every link from M$ tech said there was a registry entry that kept it restarting, and try to get into it via remote reg edit. turns out they were right, somehow a value got set differently on a reboot after adding a prog and it just kept giving me that same choice you had. the shutdown as so quick that i never did get to see the error until it was fixed, but mebbe it has some root in your prob too. do a search on the m$ tech site and see if you an find some similar issues. may not be a total loss.

 

[nageov3t]

never seen that with XP, but I've seen it several times with 2K3.

boot off the xp cd into the recovery console, run fixboot, fixmbr and run a check disk.

That should fix it.

ftw

 

[Cogman]

Originally posted by: hanoverphist

Originally posted by: Cogman

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
ACtually, this happnened to my friend about 2 weeks. ago. She just opened Yahoo in IE and BOOM, computer crashes and shuts down. She turned it back on, and it got stuck on the Windows Booting scree/got to desktop where it was running at the speed of a P2. I scaned the computer with 3 differant Av programs, and found over 2 dozen viruses. I cound't get 2 of them out no matter what I tried, so I had to format.

Interesting, maybe it is related (as the story does match somewhat) the only difference is that they are not able to get into the windows gui at all. so I think it is messed up beyond saving at this point.

sounds like a boot error, i had a brand new server2k3 do that to me right after i finished installing stuff on it. every link from M$ tech said there was a registry entry that kept it restarting, and try to get into it via remote reg edit. turns out they were right, somehow a value got set differently on a reboot after adding a prog and it just kept giving me that same choice you had. the shutdown as so quick that i never did get to see the error until it was fixed, but mebbe it has some root in your prob too. do a search on the m$ tech site and see if you an find some similar issues. may not be a total loss.

but why would safe mode fail to boot to a gui and instead go straight to a console? Shouldn't safemode just reboot like the others or do nothing if that was the case? I think it is unrelated.

 

[razor2025]

There's different "safe modes" for XP. "Safe Mode with Command Prompt" is probably the option that boots straight to console. Since it doesn't need the GUI, it loads VERY basic shell for techs to diagnose and fix problems.

 

[hanoverphist]

i wish i had kept the logs and fix i did for it, the reg i changed had something to do with the remote boot sequence, i could get to the boot choice window, but once i elected anything it would error and reboot so fast i couldnt even read the error. it was a year and a half ago, ill see if i can dig up the old info. i know i put it somewhere.

 

[Fritzo]

I train people to break down the steps you need more info on. When she said "Chatting with friends", I would have asked "what were you using to chat?" Then "when did the problem start", "what error message," etc. It's like playing 20 questions