Greetings! Scotty suggested that I post here. We just finished clean-up of malware "Sprycrusher is just the symptom" (I'm not known for my typing skills.) We had a number of unusual symptoms in our cleanup and I find in the eventvwr the message coming up that the hard drive has a bad block. This showed up repeatedly when trying to run disk check through My Computer tools. The computer has Win XP SP2. Your help would be appreciated.- Jcatsmom
The computer is a Dell Dimension 4700- about 3 years old.
I recommend backup all your critical data immediately. Then you need to determine the brand of the hard drive, go out to the hard drive maker's site and download then run their latest diagnosis program.
EDIT sorry Digerati, my slow typing again!
Jcatsmom, please follow Digerati's advice then proceed to follow my recommendations
Hi,
It sounds as though you need to run the chkdsk command with the r switch. This should identify any bad bits on your hard drive, transfer data from the bad to the good parts, marking the bad as unusable. ( reducing the potential for trouble in the future)
1 Click Start
2 Click Run
3 in the white box type:
chkdsk /r
(please note the space between the k and the / it is important)
4 click on OK
You will get a message suggesting that chkdsk will run when you next restart your machine (it needs exclusive access to your hard drive), so allow this
5 Close down your machine in the normal way (a full shutdown, not standby/sleep/hibernate)
6 Wait 30 seconds with a blank black screen
7 Restart your machine
Chkdsk will now run and examine many aspects of your hard drive, it will complete five full passes and the r switch you have applied will apply the fixes automatically where trouble is found.
Do not interrupt chkdsk or try to do anything else on your machine whilst it is running,
The 5 passes may take an hour, or more to complete, so choose your time carefully before starting.
If fixes are applied by chkdsk, when your machine boots into Windows, wait until everything has loaded and then run chkdsk again…….you may need to do this several times until it finds no more errors.
When it has finally done, see how you go…..you may then consider running the Windows System file Checker to see if all protected Windows System Files are undamaged and in the correct place and with none missing.
1 Click on start
2 Click on Run
in the white box type
sfc /scannow
(please note the space between the c and the / it is important)
Click OK
This scan will usually be completed in 20 minutes or so, if damaged or missing files are found then sfc will attempt to copy over good copies from elsewhere on your computer……if it cannot find good copies it will ask for your Microsoft Windows XP SP2 installation disc to be inserted so that the damaged or missing files can be copied from it.
It is important therefore to have your disc handy before you start……if for any reason you cannot locate the disc then it is in order for you to borrow one from a chum and use that…however do make sure that it is the correct version for your machine (XP Home or PRO and that it has SP2 included on it.
Regards
paws.
Thank you, Paws and Digerati! The computer seems to be in great shape now. I ran the diagnostic long test from Maxtor. The hard drive failed the test so I went through chkdsk /r twice. On the third run, the scan was clean. sfc /scannow did not encounter damaged or missing system files, so we are in good shape. I am in debt to you, Scotty and the rest of the Whatthetechies for helping me resolve computer problems. Thanks!- Jcatsmom
I am glad you got it going and thanks for the followup. Please understand that while thorough, chkdsk is a Windows utility and not a specific utility for Maxtor (now Seagate) drives. I would still backup all your data ASAP, and get a backup routine and stick to it.
