HP Vista Laptop problem for the real PC geeks!

Ecomike

Ecomike

NAXJA# 2091
Location
MilkyWay Galaxy
I have been working on a 3 year old HP Pavilian TX 2000 with Vista. It had would boot, but would take forever to complete boot up after desktop loaded. It several Trojan horses, virus, got then all off with assorted tools, but the slow boot, and occasional hang up problem has persisted. I have tried, chkdsk, SFC /scannow /F (it quits with a 47% complete, then "Can complete the task message), Chkdsk never finds a problem, scandisk utility at boot never finds a problem, and defrag shows to have been run every wed with no problem. Today I booted in the bios and ran the Phoenix BIOS Hard drive test and got a 10008 replace Hard disk message, but I found a site that lists 10008 error as an IRQ 3 error?

I think the HD has some corrupt files and registry issues (maybe looking for corrupt files) but have not been able to find any tools that work for finding and replacing them. I am not sure if I should believe the BIOS message?

Ideas?
 
More back ground. AVG antivirus upgrade choked a week ago. I ran a linux boot disk with AVG to clean up the bad guys on a full drive scan. I ran the AVG uninstall tool, and ran and installed Avast (AV), which is working, and found more bad stuff, now deleted. I was able to download and install SP2 for Vista, and installed 6 months of missing updates and the SP2, after 3 reboots about 6 days ago. Virrus scans have found nothing new last 48 hrs, but it still takes 15-30 minutes after the desktop loads before the laptop actuall works, and follows commands on a timely basis.
 
FWIW, I am half way through creating a 3 DVD restore/back up set of disks from the built in HP utility on this laptop, running safe mode.
 
How much RAM is in the laptop?

I've got a desktop with 1GB and it boots to the desktop pretty quick but then takes a while for all the programs and such to load and run. I tried throwing in another stick of 2GB and it was booted and functional in less than 30 secs but the stick was incompatible with my MB.
 
All the hardware is HP factory stock, for the Pavilian TX 2000 tablet/laptop.

250 GB HD, 65% free
3 GB RAM, only 1.2 GB being used after boot up is completed. 1.8 GB still free in RAM.

This is either an early sign of HD failure, or repeated software loading failures and crashes that corrupted enough files to slow boot up to a crawl. I am trying to decide if the BIOS is too dumb to test the drive, if the BIOS message is bad. So far all the Google hits I have read are no help, one way or the other.

Since it is booted to safe mode and writing DVD back up/restore disks right now, I find it hard to believe a 20 second BIOS HD test could be right that is telling me the HD is toast. It is finished writing the third DVD now, verifying the write.
 
It is not showing a HD 0, but is showing HD 1 as bad. It only has one HD, and it has two partitions, with the second partition possibly hidden.
 
I am running SFC /verifyonly in administrative safe mode (now at 60% complete), SFC /scannow was done previously, several times and it quit at 47% complete with an unable to complete message.
 
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SFC /verifyonly ran all the way. Now I have a 40 MB text file, that I have clue how to diagnose!
 
I'd reformat, the virus could of damaged some startup files. If it's been 3 years without a wipe you need it anyway and you'll be much happier from that alone. Be careful with your backup as you might be saving the viruses. I wouldn't use a backup utility and only take what you need.
 
Does the machine have a restore partition? If so, you can easily restore it to factory settings. As previously suggested, back up all of your data first. Quite often its not only easier, but works better in the long run if you re-image the machine rather than try to "fix" it after a virus incursion. If you don't have a restore partition, you can purchase the disks from HP at a very reasonable price. I bought a set for one of my brother's laptops and it cost less than $20.
 
Ralph said:
Does the machine have a restore partition? If so, you can easily restore it to factory settings. As previously suggested, back up all of your data first. Quite often its not only easier, but works better in the long run if you re-image the machine rather than try to "fix" it after a virus incursion. If you don't have a restore partition, you can purchase the disks from HP at a very reasonable price. I bought a set for one of my brother's laptops and it cost less than $20.
Click to expand...

I am not looking for easy solutions, or start over solutions. Thanks. Yes it has restore partition. I was able to make the 3 DVD set for restore yesterday, while in Safe mode. So it is not on its last legs.

I suspect the Phoenix bios error message is bogus, but can not seem to confirm this. Only found a few real posts on the Google searches about this 10008 error message:

http://www.google.com/search?q=1000...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

, and page 64 here:

http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/imprint_downloads/informit/que/urpc18/TechnicalReference.pdf

says 10008 is an IRQ 3 error message, says nothing about hard drive failure? It has 3 years of updates and programs I do not want to loose, and is set up as dual language system (English & Chinese, my son has been taking Chinese in college for some time). I would need to dig out license numbers and track down disks for reinstalling MS office......

Right now I am focused on either finding and fixing (replacing) just the corrupt files, and then letting windows (or a tool) update the files to current files, or verifying that HD actually has a hardware problem. So far non of the HD tools I have used in windows, have given me conclusive results saying I should replace the HD.

So I am looking for smart tools, to sniff out the source of the problem. I am considering a registry cleaning tool, but there seems to be a lot of registry cleaning tool scams around these days. I am considering Wise Registry cleaner:

http://wise-registry-cleaner.software.informer.com/3.9/

But it is Chinese firm behind it (other than that it is the best free I have found, with no complaints of spyware, or CC fraud charges etc...).

I hope to have my hands on a bootable copy of ultimate boot CD early next week, which has tools I am currently missing.

I am an old hat at PC repair, program writing, from the 80's and 90's, but this is my first time repairing Vista systems (had to fix mine 2 weeks ago after a TH/Virus got loose and told me my HD was crashing, click here to log on for a windows fix, LOL. It hide 3/4s of the files on my hard drive, and looked like the HD was toast! It was just a virus trying to trick me into downloading and buying a so called "FIX"! I fixed it with out starting over already.

Now trying to fix my son's. It works perfectly in safe mode!
 
www.malwarebytes.org

Then get and install spybot search and destroy - update often.

Ditch AVG and get Avast

oh and search for a tool called Hijack This if Malwarebytes doesn't produce the result you seek.

Seriously, you should consider if all of this time is worth it... (nuke and pave is the best solution).


Edit: oops - looks like you already got Avast
 
Yes I did. AVG install update, reboot, failed on both laptops recently, repeatedly failed to install, uninstall....., and I finally moved to Avast about 2 weeks ago on mine, and 5-6 days ago on my son's laptop (I have only had his here for about 5-6 days now.) I ran 3 different virus programs (Avira, Avast, and Linux boot AVG), one after the other on mine, and the linux boot CD with AVG on it and then Avast the last 5-6 days on my sons. Pretty sure all the real bad stuff has been nuked on both. Now just down to some registry/file corruption, or a slowly failing HD, or both? I need to verify which before I go much further. The Hitachi HD utility requires an XP machine to create a boot disk to check the HD, and I never had an XP machine.

I have read about Hijackthis and malwarebytes, but have not tried them yet. Was trying to clean the HD of corrupt stuff before trying to install more stuff. Can they be set up and run from a boot CD? If so how? Or can I just run them, with out installation?
 
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I don't want to sound lame or whatever here, but honestly, time you reformat. Or take the harddrive out, put it in an enclosure and scan it using another computer. More often then not it's so much trouble to fix those kind of problem it is just not worth it. Why is it so important to you to keep it that way? And why not upgrade to Windows 7? I mean we all know VISTA is just like windows ME, it's crap, in between XP and 7. I still run XP, but know that you cannot downgrade from vista to xp without going through some trouble and maybe compatibility issues with drivers.

As far as tools, there is alot of bootable CDs available on websites like thepiratebay I will not post a link here I don't think it's appropriate. I have a few that helped me every now and then, but it usually ends up the same solution.

Just my 2 cents.
 
I had a similar situation on XP. No virus, no chkdsk errors. But boot would seem to "Hang" for 20-30 minutes, after the desktop came up. Could do nothing during that time.

Turned out to be something in the TCP/IP stack that was waiting to timeout. I tried reloading just the stack, but eventually ended up reimaging to completely clean it up.

David Bricker / SYR
 
Knock on wood I seem to be making great progress. Any of you familiar with "Event Viewer"? Found it a few hours ago. Hell of a comprehensive information source for all the stuff going on in the background. It is a built in windows tool, I was not yet aware of. Since no one here mentioned it yet, I guess you all are not familiar with it either.

I have run a sequence of checks, disk file checks, and reboots, defrag, and finally ran Wise registry cleaner, and registry defrag in Wise registry cleaner afterwords, and one last defrag, and what was taking 30 minutes to boot to normal screen, if it did not lock up, is now booting up 30-60 seconds, to the desk top, and fully loaded in under 2 minutes, and browsing explorer and or the internet.....Runing one last boot up chkdsk scan now.

So what was everyone telling me here earlier? Something about "resistance is futile", Just bleach, wipe, format, reinstall and start life over?

LOL:D

Question now, is, is the Hard drive failing slowly or was it just compound junk, junk crashing, old program junk....and repeated crash junk, that needed cleanup after 3 years? I am now almost convinced the Phoenix BIOS message I listed below is bogus, as windows has repeatedly said the HD is OK this afternoon, about 10 times, after each 10 reboots.

Thinks that helped out were CHKDSK, systeminternals tools from Microsoft (Google MS System internals tools), SFC /scannow , SFC /VERIFYONLY , running everything like disk error checking, and new software installs like Avast AVirus, from safe mode, The free AVG -Linux boot disk download tool, and running disk checker from the BIOS boot up area, and Wise Registry Cleaner.
 
Current complete HD boot scan found more copies of JS:fakewarn-c [TRJ] in the folders that were previously corrupted (and recently repaired), and in some Yahoo companion app data folders. Also Avast is finding windows\temp\cab files that are corrupted, which is odd, as they should all be deleted (temps) by now, IIRC?

Interesting that Avast is finding corrupt files (no mention of a virus...etc), in a virus boot scan?
 
Ecomike said:
So what was everyone telling me here earlier? Something about "resistance is futile", Just bleach, wipe, format, reinstall and start life over?

LOL:D
Click to expand...
definition of insanity: Doing the same thing the same way - expecting different results.

Has it occurred to you that there are a few of us that actually KNOW what we're talking about?

I am done - waste your time.

:flame:
 
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