PC won't boot whilst 2nd HDD is connected anymore

[Tony Tee]

Pc not booting up whilst 2nd HDD is connected
I've got 2 hard drives, one for operating system, the other one is for all
my data/music/files.

Its been running great for a few years, rock solid, never a problem... until
I downloaded a crack/code for soundforge off a dodgy warez type site.

Since then, I've not been able to reboot, not even in safe mode. I went into
the PC and through trial and error, disconnected one of the hard drives (not
the C windows one) and boots up fine with just the C drive on its own.

I believe I've cleaned my C drive of all trojans and infections 100% clean,
and double checked at trend micro and panda scans online, avg anti spyware,
spybot and avast. So the C drive is probably not infected with anything.

But what can i do about my other hard drive, when i connect it, (with the pc
off obviously), then I cant get the pc to boot up at all, and thats the
drive thats got all my data on, so I'll be needing it on and working by
sunday evening so I can carry on with my work.

p.s. in case this has any bearing on the matter...I tried doing a windows
repair using my windows xp disc early on in the equation before i could find
out what was wrong, and it wouldn't even let me go on to install the windows
on C, as it 'did not contain a windows xp compatible partition on the disc
above'. Prompting me to go back and create a windows partition, of which I
know absolutely nothing about, but that seemed very odd, don't recall that
problem installing xp ever before.

Any suggestions?

 

[Tony Tee]

Were you able to identify what the malware was

It was vundo.gen!D and virtumonde that got onto the PC. (God knows what made
it onto the other hard drive as i can't access it anymore).

Just pop up related, possibly keylogging, but think its all cleaned off C
drive now. I think it was loaded into the memory anyways, which was why
avast made me reboot before i could do the proper full scan, after it had
detected it. Spybot seemed to get rid of remnants of it too

Used a specialist Vundo removal tool which didnt find anything also.

At what exact point during the reboot process does it stop?

Immediately, doesnt do a single thing, just sits there with a black screen
and a flashing cursor in top left of screen.

Boot the system to the (2nd drive's) manufacturer's diagnostics program
and scan it for errors.

I don't know how to do that, (or what that is exactly) but it wont even
allow me to boot in safe mode when its connected.

I have inspected the insides, unplugged and replugged the cables, everything
seems fine and working in there. Haven't tried swopping the cables yet
though, will do that on the next reboot. If I had a Ubuntu Live disc I'd
certainly give it a whirl but not got one at the mo.

The avast log file (first time 've been in there so dont know what i'm
doing) only shows scanning errors, under the error tab, so many of them in
the last day alone its gone all the way to the end of the page! Same thing
on the warnings tab, scanning warnings all the way down to bottom of page
for just the last few hours alone. Can't find any references to an actual
virus found though.

Was this with both drives connected?
Was the new partition created in the space where the prior
partition existed? If so it would seem you have a new clean
windows installation without your applications or user
settings preserved?

Yeah it was whilst both drives were plugged in, that I noted this message
about unable to install windows due to not finding a windows xp compatible
partition. Think it said the same when only the C was left plugged in too.
However even though it prompted me to create a partition, I didn't, as I
didn't even know how to do it or what I was doing. So I just went back and
exited without doign anything.

p.s. still have lots of recent registry back ups from where I've been using
ccleaner the last few days/weeks and its made back ups of the registry so
wondering if I might be brave enough to swop the registry for one of the
back ups. (If I knew how, lol).

Cheers for the reply btw.

Andy

 

[~misfit~]

Somewhere on teh intarweb "kony" typed:

Most often this is a sign it couldn't find a valid boot
device.

It depends on the speed of the machine and the definition if "immediately".
Is the graphics card BIOS showing? (Does it usually?) Is any of the POST
sequence showing? (Doesn't sound like it to me.)

If it can't find a valid boot device it will still go through the first part
of POST, checking CPU, RAM, then detecting FDD/HDDs before it hangs.

It sounds to me like there's something more fundamental wrong here (if in
fact "immediately" *does* mean instantly). Wrong as in the second HDD dying
was the cause of the original no-boot scenario. Most PCs will run fine (on a
hardware level) for a long time with malware present

If even the graphics BIOS isn't showing then perhaps the HDD in question is
just causing such a catastrophic power or I/O conflict that it's stalling
the whole POST sequence.

Of course this presupposes that there was a hardware problem at roughly the
same time as the malware problem. In fact a malware problem wouldn't have
prevented the PC from booting at the POST stage.

I know that it's unlikely that two things happened at once or close together
but Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is usually the
correct one and in this case the simplest explanation is that the second HDD
is dodo-dead. Dead in a way that includes a short of some sort that prevents
the PC from POSTing. The discovery and subsequent cleaning of the malware on
drive C is a red herring.

I would guess that the HDD died a gradual death, first causing errors of the
sort the OP described (and attributed to malware previously) when trying to
do a repair install of Windows. Errors that prevented the IDE controller
from finding any drives. Now, if indeed "immediately" is being used
correctly, it seems that the drive has gone from being in ill health to
having shucked this mortal coil.

If the data is important prehaps it's time for the freezer trick?

However, if t'were me, firstly I'd try the drive in another PC, in an
external enclosure or use a USB/IDE adapter.

TTFN,

 

[Rod Speed]

Somewhere on teh intarweb "kony" typed:

It depends on the speed of the machine and the definition if
"immediately". Is the graphics card BIOS showing? (Does it usually?)
Is any of the POST sequence showing? (Doesn't sound like it to me.)

If it can't find a valid boot device it will still go through the
first part of POST, checking CPU, RAM, then detecting FDD/HDDs before
it hangs.
It sounds to me like there's something more fundamental wrong here
(if in fact "immediately" *does* mean instantly). Wrong as in the
second HDD dying was the cause of the original no-boot scenario. Most
PCs will run fine (on a hardware level) for a long time with malware present

If even the graphics BIOS isn't showing then perhaps the HDD in
question is just causing such a catastrophic power or I/O conflict
that it's stalling the whole POST sequence.

Of course this presupposes that there was a hardware problem at
roughly the same time as the malware problem. In fact a malware
problem wouldn't have prevented the PC from booting at the POST stage.

I know that it's unlikely that two things happened at once or close
together but Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is
usually the correct one

Occam's Razor says nothing of the sort and isnt relevant to fault finding anyway.

and in this case the simplest explanation is that the second HDD is dodo-dead.

Simplest is completely irrelevant to what is the actual fault causing the symptoms seen.

Dead in a way that includes a short of some sort that prevents the PC from POSTing. The discovery and subsequent
cleaning of the malware on drive C is a red herring.

I would guess that the HDD died a gradual death, first causing errors
of the sort the OP described (and attributed to malware previously)
when trying to do a repair install of Windows. Errors that prevented
the IDE controller from finding any drives. Now, if indeed
"immediately" is being used correctly, it seems that the drive has
gone from being in ill health to having shucked this mortal coil.

That wont normally produce the symptoms seen.

 

[Tony Tee]

FIXED.

All I did was swop the sata HDD connections over on the motherboard,
(nothing swopped at the actual hard drive side) so where the C drive was
plugged into one thingy on the motherboard, and the 2nd drive plugged into
the other, I just swopped them around on the board and it booted up fine
also recognising my 2nd hard drive.

(I had tried various swopping bits over til I got to that, but everything
was pointing to the fact that it was trying to boot from the 2nd HDD first).

So somehow, its managed to change the boot order/sequence over.

I wonder how its managed to do that?!!!!!!
I wonder if my work here is done,,, or there's anything else I should be
doing now?

cheers all for trying to help.

 

[Rod Speed]

FIXED.

All I did was swop the sata HDD connections over on the motherboard,
(nothing swopped at the actual hard drive side) so where the C drive
was plugged into one thingy on the motherboard, and the 2nd drive
plugged into the other, I just swopped them around on the board and
it booted up fine also recognising my 2nd hard drive.

(I had tried various swopping bits over til I got to that, but everything was pointing to the fact that it was trying
to boot from the 2nd HDD first).

So somehow, its managed to change the boot order/sequence over.

I wonder how its managed to do that?!!!!!!

Could be as basic as the cmos battery going flat or the connection to it being dirty.

I wonder if my work here is done,,, or there's anything else I should be doing now?

I'd replace the coin cell battery just because its cheap and easy to change.

 

[~misfit~]

(replying through Tony's post as I've had this clown killfiled for years)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

 

[2345]

(replying through Tony's post as I've had this clown killfiled for years)

Because it hates having its nose rubbed in its terminal stupiditys.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor

I know what it is, and that link doesnt say a damned thing about it being useful for fault finding.