On Fri, 9 May 2008 21:51:19 +0100, "Tony Tee"
wrote:

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.


Were you able to identify what the malware was so that you
have a better chance of finding information about it to
check on whether any portion remains in the system?
However, some malware will download more malware and sustain
itself.

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.

At what exact point during the reboot process does it stop?
This would tend to mean that either some malware referenced
from the C drive is loaded from the disconnected one, or you
have an unfortunate coincidence that something else with
windows or the 2nd drive happened to go wrong at about the
same time as your presumed malware infection from the crack.

Often a virus scanner will create a log of what it found,
you might check this to identify it.


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.

Boot the system to the (2nd drive's) manufacturer's
diagnostics program and scan it for errors. In case the
drive is failing you might think about what/how you'd copy
data off, if it is failing you may have limited to no time
left and should try to back up the data (assuming you
hadn't) before scanning with the diagnostics.

One attempt would be to place this drive in another system,
though first you might unplug and replug the power cable and
try a different data cable, and inspect the electrical
contacts on the board, PSU plug, and drive.

You might also try booting to another OS like a Ubuntu
LiveCD with both drives connected.



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?


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?

It is very odd, that windows would boot from single drive
but then the XP disc wouldn't see this as a valid partition,
and yet would see the drive and allow making one.

Is it possible you created this partition on the 2nd drive,
that it now actually has a windows installation on it and
the windows installer pointed the first drive which boots,
to the second drive as the source of the XP installation?
At this point I would pull both drives, connect them both in
turn to a different system running a working installation of
XP and scan the drives, check the contents of each, and back
up data if it seems necessary.