Computer Issues Part III

Alright, so I think I know what's wrong now, in a general sense.

Let me explain further. My coworker had given me the suggestion that maybe just my C drive was corrupted, and I should reformat the second internal drive and install Windows XP on that. So on Monday night I booted from my disk, and reformatted both drives and installed Windows on the second internal drive (I call this my Storage Drive, as it usually has all my pictures, video and music on it). Well, it didn't work at all, in fact it was worse than the previous installations of Windows. I'm not sure why but maybe it was a Master/Slave issue? The C hard drive did have the boot priority (I had changed it in setup but it changed back).

So I wiped out the Windows install on the Storage Drive and re-installed it on the C drive. And it worked perfectly! I was so happy.....the internet was working, Windows looked like it should've looked, everything seemed fine. So I turned on my external hard drive (I had backed up everything from the second internal hard drive to this drive) as I normally keep it unplugged, and that's when I started getting errors, and issues, and Windows crashing and restarting. The internet started crashing and I would download files and they would be corrupted. So I think I have a virus as everything was fine until I turned on the External hard drive. Maybe it was the autoplay feature that released the virus.

Anyways, last night (Tuesday) I started Windows in safe mode with networking and tried to download antivirus software from the internet but they were all corrupted files. I also tried to run Trend Micro's Housecall (online virus and spyware scan) but it didn't work. So then I just turned on my external hard drive and copied and pasted various files into my second internal hard drive. In case I have to reformat my external hard drive, I wanted to save my pictures, music, saved game files, my Sims data, my bookmarks html file and other important documents. I didn't drag over any programs or .exe files.

Tonight when I get home, I will reformat my C drive again and install Windows XP and leave my external hard drive unplugged and turned off. If I still have issues, I will know that the external hard drive managed to infect the secondary hard drive, and I will reformat both internal drives. Then I will make sure Windows Update runs(another thing I wasn't able to do because of the issues) and my anti-virus is running and I have all my maintenance and cleaning tools downloaded from the internet, before I turn on the external hard drive and attempt to recover some of my data.

Wish me luck!

More Computer Issues....

So I tried to fix my computer by reformatting it, but it didn't work. My computer is still messed up!

First of all, I kept on getting errors when installing Windows XP....a couple of times my computer crashed and then restarted while in the middle. Also, other weird things are going on, like my computer not being able to run Themes. It loads with the Windows Classic theme and not one of the shiny XP themes. Another thing is I can change the Desktop Wallpaper but when the computer restarts it's not there anymore.

The kicker? NO INTERNET. Yes, you heard me. I try to add a new Network to the Network Connections area, but it keeps on disappearing on me. It doesn't seem able to tell that I have an internet connection that's always on, and always attached to the computer. I called Rogers to find out whether there was something else I had to do to get the internet working. After they had me run the cmd.exe program out of the Start Menu's run command, they had me type in ipconfig/renew at which point it came back with the message Unable to run this service, RPC Server unavailable. At which point they said my network card is broken and I need a new one. Not very helpful.

I looked up the RPC Server unavailable line in google and found some hints regarding the Administrative Services program and the registry, but it didn't work. I should also point out that my Windows Installer seems to be broken, as I couldn't install a bunch of programs. It kept on saying I needed to upgrade to version 3.1, and some installers would just quit and give me error messages or file corrupted messages. I should note that I made sure the drivers were installed and that none of them had the yellow question marks and they all seemed to be working, even my Ethernet driver (which is for the internet).

So maybe I'll have to replace the motherboard on my computer for it to start working again. Not a hard task, I've done it before, but a pain in the ass nonetheless. A coworker also gave me the idea that maybe my harddrive is corrupted and I should try to install Windows on my other internal harddrive. I'll try that when I get home from work tonight. I had updated my drivers and did something in the registry the week before all these issues, but if that was the problem, it would've been fixed when I reformatted the computer and reinstalled Windows XP.

I've also checked my Hotmail email account and found that I've sent out a lot of spam emails to the people in my address book. Are these issues connected? So many questions....

Well, I'll keep you updated and thanks for reading!