Interesting couple of days

[bootneck02]

Sorry I have not been on line for the last couple of days but had a few problems. Firstly the good lady needed a replacement for her defunct PC so I was able to obtain an old RM PC from the local primary school for £20, but before I could take it off site I had to reformat the hard drive with a Bart disc. I have installed Lubuntu 12.04 as it has only a 60gig drive and minimal memory downloaded all the updates etc and it is running OK a little slow on the games she plays on Facebook, but it will do for the time being until I cobble together the new one I am going to build her.
The next thing to happen, when I returned to my PC was that MSE was missing on inspection I found that other software the icons were there but would not boot so re booted the PC then it all went wild and lost picture and the screen went blank. I got the Bart disc out and luckily it booted into that so checked the drives C & D (back up) and they were both were blank the operating system and files had been wiped. Using the Bart disc I reformatted both drives and then reinstalled Windows 7 and I reinstalled all updates and just finished. Anyone any idea why this should have happened? so I guard against it happening again.

 

[Taffycat]

Aww, sorry to hear about your PC probs Bootneck.

Regarding your 'wiped' disks - I've read several accounts about folk who suffered similar experiences to this. It turned out they had been infected by a virus/malware, which had not actually wiped the data, but had hidden it (right clicking the drive letter, then un-checking the 'hidden' attribute revealed the lost files/data.)

I'm not sure if that is the case for you, of course, but thought it worth mentioning. Here is the piece I'm referring to: Tom's Hardware linky.

Folk have also mentioned a fake Windows Recovery 'optimisation' programme which has resulted in similar happenings - more about that, and how to remove it, on Bleeping Computer.

Good luck with the new PC build.


http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-windows-recovery

 

[bootneck02]

Thanks TC for your TLC. It was just a nuance that both PC gave up together and thanks for the links.