This can't be good...

Ok, just because I don't want to mess this up, do I re-install by going to the lavasoft website and using one of their mirrors, or can I do that with what already exists on my laptop?

If you still have the original installer, and it was obtained from the official site, you can certainly use that.

Ok, I don't think I have the original installer, so I'm going to download it from lavasoft.

Wow, this sucks. My machine was running quite well. I went to the lavasoft mirror and began the download of Ad-Aware. Things appeared to be going very, very well… and then it blue screened out of nowhere. I've shut down the machine, and I'll await further instructions. I will not be accessing the machine tomorrow night, so this may have to hold for a day or two. Dang it.

Any chance that it told you what crashed when it blue screened, and if so do you remember what it was? Whenever you do get a chance, try again to get the Ad-aware installer and complete the re-install then uninstall process. Once you can accomplish that, or in lieu of that, we'll run some further cleanup routines and then some tests that might help narrow down any possible problems that might still exist.

I'm sorry Dave, I don't remember exactly what it said, but it was very familiar… I think it mentioned KERNEL_STACK… I know I've seen it many times in this process. Since I can see the Ad-Aware icon on my desktop again, I've tried to utilize AppRemover to locate the program again to try to uninstall, but no luck, it doesn't identify ANY security application… but I can see Ad-Aware is active in the tool tray. Today, however, I was able to locate Ad-Aware on my Currently Installed Programs list… and I've opted to remove. (nat'ch) We'll see how this goes.

The uninstall appeared to have gone pretty well. I rebooted the computer and could see no outward signes of Ad-Aware. I left the machine unattended for a bit while I was working on a few other chores. When I came back after 30 minutes or so, it had blue screened again. It reads as follows: A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer. If this is the first time you've seen this Stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again, follow these steps: Disable or uninstall any anti-virus, disk deftagmentation or backup utilities. Check your hard drive configuration, and check for any updated drivers. Run CHKDSK /F to check for hard drive corruption, and then restart your computer. Technical information: *** STOP: 0x00000024 (0x001902FE, 0xF1285B6C, 0xF1285868, 0xF73338D6) *** Ntfs.sys - Address F73338D6 base at F7322000, DateStamp 48025be5 Beginning dump of physical membory Physical memory dump complete. Contact your system administrator or technical support group for further assistance.

Well, clearly this isn't good. Now I get the blue screen during the start-up process, both in regular mode, and I tried it in safe mode only to get the same thing. I can, however, boot up using the zip-drive method we used several days ago, though the machine still refuses to recognize the zip drive in the mnt folder. Man I'm hoping someone's got a magical answer for this one. I really thought we were making some progress.

My apologies for not getting back to you sooner. I suspect you're facing hard drive failure. Since you don't have access to the usb in xPUD I suggest you consider obtaining an adapter that you can use to connect the hard drive to your desktop, something like this one, then get any important data backed up. There are a number of utilities you can then use to test the drive. If it is indeed failing, it may be possible to clone the old drive with xPUD or some other flavor of linux using the adapter. It will depend on whether or not the drive attached to the adapter is recognized in the linux environment.

Thankfully, I am very fortunate in that regard, Dave. I keep my data backed up on a portable external drive, so I'm really in pretty good shape in that regard. I was wondering about possibility of forcing a manual restore point like we did the other day.

You can certainly try that, though if the hard drive is failing, it will do little good - won't take long to be back in the same shape.

Fair enough. If I do try a manual restore again, is there anything I should know? Will the Ad-Aware stuff that I just worked to eliminate still be there? More importantly, is there another alternative I haven't considered? Perhaps one of the utilities you mentioned earlier, that would test the drive?

Unless you have a fresh restore point made after the removal of Ad-Aware to use, then yes, it will again be, at least partially, intact.

In general, the hard drive testing tool to use is determined by the brand of hard drive. Have a look here.

I have a very small usb bootable image that has a checkdisk utility (much like the Windows checkdisk util) you could run too, to see if it helps get the machine back to a bootable state.

Ok Dave, tell me how you think I should proceed. If manual restore point is our strategy, then I'm on it. If we're testing the hard drive, just tell me how I determine the manufacturer. If the usb image is the way to go, I'll do that. Just point me in whatever direction seems to make more sense.

Let's try the usb image and checkdisk util.

Next download NTBR_USB.exe and save it to your hard drive. With the USB device attached, double click the exe to run it.
Verify that the drive letter shown is the same as assigned by Windows, then click OK.
Once the image is written to the device, you will be prompted to reboot ~ do not reboot and instead remove the device.

Insert the bootable device in the ailing computer and start it, then use the appropriate F key to access the boot menu where you can choose to boot from USB.

You should be presented with a boot screen - select usb and press Enter to boot to the device.
After a warning screen there is a keyboard language options screen - press Enter to leave it at EN-US.
You should now be at the Tool options screen.
Type 5 then hit Enter to choose the command prompt.
This should put you at an X:\>prompt ~ X: is the ramdrive (temporary drive space in memory).
Type the following bolded command then hit Enter to start the checkdisk utility.

tools\ntfs4dos\chkdsk

When checkdisk starts, it will say "Drücken Sie die [ENTER] Taste um die Laufwerke zu prüfen" which translates to "Press the [ENTER] key to check the drives"
Press Enter to allow it to scan any detected hard drives.
It should attempt to automatically repair any disk errors.
Please make note of what it does and let me know.

When complete, type menu then hit Enter.
Type 6 to select Quit then hit Enter.
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart the machine and see if it will boot normally.