Virus??? This is weird

[WildTech]

This is starting to look like a pattern and I suspect a virus but a virus scan comes up clean and I'm not able to find any info to confirm it.

In the last 2 weeks I've had 4 machines come to the shop with hard drive errors. They boot fine, but sometime during normal operation, they gernerate the good old " can't write to drive C:" error. The weird thing is, if you hit any key, the machines resume normal operation and repeat the error randomly. Sometimes going for days with no problems. Scandisk and Norton Disk Dr report no errors but the problems persist.

Does anyone else have any of these problems or know what causes them? This is very strange to have 4 doing the same thing in such a short period of time. Thanks

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WildTech
MasterMind Computers ... Bring your PC to the Master!!

[Larommi]

Originally posted by WildTech:
This is starting to look like a pattern and I suspect a virus but a virus scan comes up clean and I'm not able to find any info to confirm it.

In the last 2 weeks I've had 4 machines come to the shop with hard drive errors. They boot fine, but sometime during normal operation, they gernerate the good old " can't write to drive C:" error. The weird thing is, if you hit any key, the machines resume normal operation and repeat the error randomly. Sometimes going for days with no problems. Scandisk and Norton Disk Dr report no errors but the problems persist.

Does anyone else have any of these problems or know what causes them? This is very strange to have 4 doing the same thing in such a short period of time. Thanks

I have seen this before and it was a customer that had old Archnet cards in his machine. Apperently, they require certain memory addresses that Win98SE gave to the hard drive controllers causing a slight irritating conflict. The problem was trying to track this down. It took a long time because Device Mangler did not report a conflict. When any other version of Windows was loaded the machine was fine. To this day I never doubt it when some one has a bizzare problem and it is M$ related.

By the way the system(s) were Asus P5AB boards with ISA Archnet cards.


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You spend your whole life believing that you're on the right track,
only to discover that you're on the wrong train.

[pga]

what is the hardware/OS config?

[WildTech]

Thats just the thing PGA, its been happening with a variety of different systems. None of the 4 systems in question is anywhere close to the same configuration. The operating systems are Windows 98se and Windows Millennium.

I've tried switching out drive cables, disconnecting everything but the vid card. All the standard things, but the problems continue. I finally copied the last machines drive over to another drive, reformatted and copied the customers address book, favorites, etc back to the origional drive and that seemed to fix it. Thats why I'm thinking virus. There doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with the drives but at startup, the error message telling me that bad sectors have developed on the drive appears. Really Weird!!!!

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WildTech
MasterMind Computers ... Bring your PC to the Master!!

[BadCache]

Have you launched "system information" and checked for conflicts or trouble devices? Is there any hardware that is common between all the machines?

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Suicidal twin kills sister by mistake! Story at ten!

[pga]

Originally posted by WildTech:
Thats just the thing PGA, its been happening with a variety of different systems. None of the 4 systems in question is anywhere close to the same configuration. The operating systems are Windows 98se and Windows Millennium.

I've tried switching out drive cables, disconnecting everything but the vid card. All the standard things, but the problems continue. I finally copied the last machines drive over to another drive, reformatted and copied the customers address book, favorites, etc back to the origional drive and that seemed to fix it. Thats why I'm thinking virus. There doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with the drives but at startup, the error message telling me that bad sectors have developed on the drive appears. Really Weird!!!!

what are the CPU speeds and are the HD udma66, 100, etc?? there were a few issues with fast systems causing problems....

but anyhoo... go to the c:\windows\applog directory on these systems and delete all of the files within that directory, not the folder, just the files.... this may help if one of the files are corrupt, they will be re-built...

[WildTech]

CPU speed ranges from 233 up to 1 gig. The drives are Western Digital, Fujitsu, Maxtor, and IBM. Both udma 66 and 100 do the same thing. Like I said earlier. This isn't an equipment issue. I'm sure of that. This has to be something software related. Thats why I"m thinking virus. I just got another machine in today with the same thing. It too is a different configuration from the other 4

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WildTech
MasterMind Computers ... Bring your PC to the Master!!

[Damned Angel]

are there any other parts that are the same in all the machines such as video, sound, modem, cd-rom/burner/dvd, nic?

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Who's cruel joke was it to put the letter "S" in the word LISP??

[Larommi]

Originally posted by Damned Angel:
are there any other parts that are the same in all the machines such as video, sound, modem, cd-rom/burner/dvd, nic?

or software for that matter. Like AV programs, crash guard or utilities. Heck if they all have that same ISP they could have gotten a bum install disk that did the same thing to all the machines.


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You spend your whole life believing that you're on the right track,
only to discover that you're on the wrong train.

[pga]

when you set these up... did you install Windows from scratch? or did you ghost/copy the OS from another drive?

if this is the case... go to the c:\windows\applog directory on these systems and delete all of the files within that directory, not the folder, just the files.... this may help if one of the files are corrupt or are specific to the other system you copied the OS from, they will be re-built...

[WildTech]

These systems are really a mixed bag of both software and hardware.

I only loaded one of these machines and it was a clean install. The other ones are either big name machines or custom builts from other local companies. I'm up to 6 systems now displaying this same problem.

Thanks for the replies. Keep em coming, maybe something will click.

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WildTech
MasterMind Computers ... Bring your PC to the Master!!

[TransMan]

I doubt this is the cause, however, since it MAY be a related issue, I thought I'd post this. I have had two machines with drive access trouble becuase of Win98's standby problem and caching. They have relased a patch for it, however, on one box, it managed to corrupt the FAT.

Both were very different machines, the one that went down was DFI running P2 300 with 64 megs, Maxtor 3 gig HD, the other VT6X4 P 3 450 128 megs, Seagate 15 gig. I hope this helps

[Andi]

Just a pennys worth.
as youve tried everything else,try replacing the power supply with alarger one as an instability here can cause an erratic problem.

[WildTech]

Thanks for the help guys. Unfortunately, the only thing that seems to fix this problem is a format and reinstall. I'm stumped. It absolutely has to be software, because a hardware issue would not be corrected for a reformat. I'm very busy right now with the holidays coming up, but I intend to do some more extensive research on this problem and I'll open another thread if I find a solution. Once again, thanks for all your suggestions.

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WildTech
MasterMind Computers ... Bring your PC to the Master!!