Dylan's in trouble...

[jadecat]

Dylan, for those not in the know- is my home laptop computer. Dylan has decided that he no longer wishes to fully boot up in 'normal' mode. He will still boot up, eventually, in Safe Mode. It just takes for-freaking-ever!

I quizzed one of our techs here- and he suggested checking a couple places (msconfig, run a defrag in Safe Mode, etc). So we do those things- the msconfig did have a weird entry, we got rid of that, but it didn't help. Tried running the defrag, Dylan thought about it for awhile, started the defrag process, and then went to a black screen...

We have TrendMicro for antivirus, spyware, malware, greyware, etc. It updates every 12 hours or so. So I'm not too concerned about a virus. And we can't run a scan while in Safe Mode anyway... why is that? Anywho, I also checked (because hubby did a Windows Update a few days ago) but the update KB17013(puts the Windows Desktop Search on your computer) wasn't included at the time. So that wasn't the issue.

Hubby still thinks it might be a virus. I think it's the hard drive (it'll spin for a few, stuff happens, then it stops.... then spins up again and more stuff happens (i.e. when starting up it'll put the placeholder icons on the screen, and then slowly replace those with the 'real' icons).

Opinions?

(Oh, and we did get the extended warranty from Circuit City, so if it's the hard drive we shouldn't be out much. :) Although... the October payment on the Circuit City credit card - that we used to buy Dylan- saw it's final payment this month... so the month Dylan is officially paid for, he goes on strike. They raised our limit on the card this month too. I threatened Dylan saying that if he didn't straighten up and boot right I'd replace him... Maybe I would name that one Brandon. *thinks* )


(PS- this also explains why I wasn't on Yahoo Messenger last night to word war with my DIPPY peeps. Adding to the annoyance as I wanted to be there!)

Comments

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

What operating system are you using? If not Windows Xp, then upgrade ASAP. Win 98 would do things like eat its own registry and other stupid tings. XP has done very little that is stupid. I don't think its your hard drive. The fact you can book in safe mode leads me away from that. When a drive fails, you won't even get a boot sequence in ASCII when you start. Also, for major hardware failures, the BIOS will make the computer beep a certain number of times indicating what piece of hardware has failed. Not always, but its common. BIOS is the very low level part of the system that's stored in the electronics rather than the hard drive.

If you're using XP, install the latest service packs and patches. Also, make sure your virus software is updated when you run it. Back up your files too! Do that before anything else.

There is a possibility that the update installed something that interferes with something else. I have had that happen to me and it totally boogered up my operations. MS had a revised update out a few days later in that case, but you'd still have to know that was the problem in order to install the fix.

Lastly, consider switching to Ubuntu Linux.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

We're running XP Home currently. I'm thinking the hard drive is dying- hence running slowly- but not dead yet. So it hasn't failed, but could soon.

Problem in part, we can't run a virus check. Since it won't boot up as anything but Safe Mode- and that doesn't seem to allow scans.

Will try to do another Win Update and see what happens.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

Since I mostly do Unix and Mac OSX, I don't know XP in depth, but does it have a way to roll back updates? Uninstall them? That's something I'd try first.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Steve said he tried that... but I'm not sure what date he went back to. I'll have to try it myself (he's not the most gifted when it comes to computers. ;) ). Thanks for the ideas.

[shay-writes.livejournal.com]

*snugs*

You were missed. That said, the rest of us can't get in the groove. I wrote a pitiful amount of words. Steph, Rachel, and Laura did better than I did, but nothing like last year when we were warring our asses off in prep for Nov.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Wow, and all because I wasn't there? ;) *hugs*

[frawg-angel.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... the joys. BTW, Brandon was my favorite anyway!

Do you hear any odd noises with the HD? Clicking when it starts and stops or stalls? It may or may not be a virus, but it sounds like it could be the HD.

I would try and save off anything if you can, you should be able to in safe mode move things to a USB drive if you have the option to do safe with USB support. And then, if you know what your programs are, maybe you can try and reformat the machine.

Does Circuit City not have a service department? If not, I would suggest taking it to Geek Squad and seeing if they can take a quick look. If it's a HD issue and you mention the idea to them, they may be able to take it out and test it independantly. If it's just the OS, you can do that at home yourself.

[jadecat.livejournal.com]

Hubby wasn't too excited about naming the next one Brandon... Maybe because he does get the reference. Silly man.

The HD isn't making any weird noises that I've noticed. We did get an I/O error about the HelpSVC.exe not running right/being installed properly. So I don't know. Hubby is taking it to Circuit City today- hopefully they'll be able to do something there to check on it. I know he'll definitely tell them about the hard drive. I also sent him with the backup disks we made. :)

AND! I are smrt. We have two USB drives (a 1 GB and a 2 GB) and we transferred almost all of 'my documents' onto it (that's where the important stuff is). So if we have to reformat the important stuff can be reloaded. :)

Thanks. :)