IT JUST WASN'T MY DAY!!!

[cracker39]

Today has been the worst in a long time...MY COMPUTER IS TRASHED!!! Or at least it looks that way for now. I'm on my wife's PC to check the forum.

I was upgrading my Norton Internet Virus Protection programm online. While it was running, I think the protection was disabled and I saw a flashing message about being under attack. The upgrade program ended with errors and I couldn't do a thing. I rebooted, then when it came back up, all my desktop icons were blank and nothing would run. I called the help line, and of course, the two techs I talked to were both in India. I hope they could understand me better than I could understand them. They tried to help, but nothing worked. So, I am on my own.

I spent a few hours, booted in safe mode, using the old DOS commands to save most of my files I needed onto another hard drive, where I should have kept them backed up all along (Yeah, I still know DOS, and KNOW that I should keep files backed up).

I tried to reload my XP OS, but no luck. I couldn't even format the C Drive in Safe Mode...Catch 22. Finally, using a CD that came with the hard drive, I got it formatted and partitioned. My BIOS can see it, the reboot process finds it, but my XP install says it can't find any hard drives and quits. I AM DEAD!!!. I guess I'll have to take this one to a shop. Woe is me.

So there was nothing else to to but go to HF and buy some sale items to help me feel a little better. At least, I still have some beers left and one is being quick chilled in the freezer to go with a pizza.

[mikeschn]

Sorry to hear about your crash Dale...

You might want to check out Panda!

In the meantime, wipe your disk and reload. You do have a backup, don't you?

Mike...

[cracker39]

quote="mikeschn"]Sorry to hear about your crash Dale...

You might want to check out Panda!

In the meantime, wipe your disk and reload. You do have a backup, don't you?

Mike...[/quote]

I did wipe the hard drive clean...formatted and partitioned. My OS install just can't find it. I have no where else to go except back to basics. I'll start reading my motherboard manual tomorrow, and pretend I'm building this PC from scratch all over again. For now, I'm wiped out and ready to retrieve that beer.

[toypusher]

Did you use FDISK? If you know how to use it, then try this FDISK /MBR - (Command used to rewrite the Master Boot Record ) You may have to reinstall your OS after this to get it to work. You may have gotten a nasty in your MBR that is stopping your PC from seeing the OS

[cracker39]

Thanks for the reminder...no I didn't run fdisk yet, but with the HD already wiped clean, I'm not sure it will help, but will try anything tomorros.

[Jiminsav]

did you format it in NTFS or fat32..XP can't read fat 16 and sometimes has trouble with fat 32..just a thought

[Vegabond9]

Sorry to hear about the PC. Been there a couple of times.

Before I retired, my companies PC guru and networking manager forbid all of us technicians from installing Norton ANYTHING into our laptops. If we did he said we were on our own. I didn't believe him and installed it anyway..... I was very lucky to have him quite indebted to me for programing his personal projects on the company CNC's and when I confessed that I had a copy of Norton in my PC he was able to save it just before it self destructed. I'm still not quite sure what it didn't agree with but I suspect it was our company networking software. That was a close call. Traveling all the time I would have been hurting with that laptop down. Hated to have to tell him it was in the pc but it was dying before my eyeballs... It came installed on our home pc but I refuse to let it ever run even though it might be ok without the company software involved. Still gunshy.

[Jiminsav]

yep..norton sucks..get free Avast antivirus

[asianflava]

Some people swear by Norton. I found it to invasive so I didn't reinstall after I reformatted. I use Mcaffee for virus, adaware for spyware, and no firewall. I guess my router acts as a hardware firewall. As long as I'm up to date, I don't have any problems. Maybe someone is hacking my system, I don't care, I don't keep sensitive info on it anyway. As long as I can retrieve my pictures and music, I'm good. That works for me and your mileage may vary.

[Guest]

IT JUST WASN"T MY DAY!!!

Nor was it for the Astros too...

Hope you get everything back in order with the 'puter...

[BufordT]

Now's a good tme to buy the 499.00 mini mac. Saves on problems like this.

Bufordt

[toypusher]

yep..norton sucks..get free Avast antivirus

Have to disagree with this one. If you use Norton Antivirus NOT any other norton internet garbage. Just the Antivirus, it is hard to beat. The problem comes in when you get one of the 'all-in-one' versions. I have used Norton Antivirus for years and never had a problem. My wife uses McCaffey at work and has all sorts of problems (even had a few viruses get by it). So I don't want anything to do with it. There are lots of antivirus programs out there that work just fine and some are free. I use AntiVir personal one one of my pcs and have had no problems for the last 4 years.

I have worked in the computer field for a few years and have used them many more years. Everyone on this thread seems to think that the upgrade of Norton caused Dale's problem. Well, that may be and may not be. Disk problems have caused simular problems on occasion also. I was upgrading XP on a laptop once and it died on me. Tried for months to fix the problem and never could. It finally came down to a problem on the motherboard, that had nothing to do with the fact that I was doing an internet update at the time.

Anyway, Just may opinion and some experiences.

BTW: Only quoted Jim because his was short! Did not mean anything towards you Jim!

[JohnF]

Norton - don't get me going on that outfit...even with their name change...a story...

I had Norton - yearly subscription for a weekly update...with over two months of pre-paid service left an attempt at updating was rejected as "your subscription has expired."

Called "customer service" ...woman said she'd look at my file...came back and said, "Your records are all messed up, what did you do to them?" I replied that there was nothing I could have done to THEIR records, and she replied, "Well, you must have a virus!" - I asked, "What the hell am I paying you for then?" and was so damn mad I hung up...

so much for "Customer Service!"

John

[cracker39]

The company I last worked for in McLean, VA (until 2001), changed from McAvee to Norton around 1998 and it worked fine for them and for me at home. I've used it since then with no problems. If it caused my problem, it was due to a glitch that occurred while installing the new upgrade. It is possible that it was unprotected during that period and a virus hit me, but the more I think about it, the more I think I may have a motherboard problem. When (or if) I get it working again, I have no problem staying with the Symantic (i.e. Norton) service. I use the total anti-virus/internet protection with pop-up blocking and password control on my PC. Even with my router firewall, I feel more protected with the additional software.

My MB is an ABIT K7-Raid that supports 8 IDE devices, not just 4, and that may complicate my problem. Since the boot process shows all 3 of my hard drives during the startup, and the XP install disk, which I have used several times, cannot find any hard drives, it leads me to think hardware problem. Norton (Symantic) couldn't have caused my hardware to suddenly go bad. Coincidence? Very likely. After my HD was formatted, the only thing left to check that part is to do the Fdisk if I can get it up with a floppy boot. I do have windows 98 on another HD and can boot with that, but not sure it will Fdisk my HD properly for XP.

So, if all else fails, I'll go back to the MB manual, and may even open my case and disconnect all but the main hard drive that I have formatted, and start from scratch just as I did when I put it together the first time. I'll round up all of my CDs for the installs of all hardware and go through them in order. If I can get it working, then, I'll put the other HDs back, load the drivers that support the other 4 IDE devices, and retrieve all of my saved documens from the other HD. what I was worried most about losing were my diagrams and instruction files for my TTT. But, I did manage to save them to another HD using DOS copy commands before I formatted the main HD.

With my poor memory, it's a miracle that I still remember how to work in DOS. How many of you have worked on the PC with just a black screen and white letters, where the mouse was useless? That's how I learned to work with PCs 20 years ago. It's very tedious and laborius to do the simplest things like creating sub-directories and copying a set of files from one HD to another that we take for granted by a mouse movement and a click. It took me a coule of hours to do what would have taken a few minutes in Windows.

[toypusher]

Dale,

You shoudl be able to make a boot disk and put fdisk on it from the drive with win98. Then go into the bios and set the floppy as the 1st boot device. Run fdisk and delete all partitions. Then create at least 1 new partion and make it active. If your XP CD still does not see it, then try swithing witch HD is your primary.

Did you say you have a secondary HD on the same PC with win98? If so, what boot loader are you using? Boot loaders cause problems with win2000 and XP if the Microsoft OS is not the first install. If this is the case then disconnecting the extra drive with an OS installed may be the answer.

Do you have a spare PC that you could put your 'crashed' HD in? If all else fails you could try this and then see if the XP CD will see it in that machine.