Gaming Mums laptop is screwed

[WeeBabyDoll]

So my mum has a laptop less than a year old, it's running really slowly, and when I tried to get into her task manager it said taskmanager.exe not found.
Everything also crashed on her and she had to uninstall and reinstall everything again. Any thoughts on whats wrong?

 

[spotanjo3]

I recommend you not to install and reinstalled everything. Its waste your time. I suggest you to reformat it with windows cd and it will be new and you will need to add antivirus program and spyware program to protection your laptop. I have my computer under 2 years old and never have a problem and not even slow it down because I have those programs for protection.

 

[luke_c]

She probably deleted some system files, you said she's done a reinstall?

 

[WeeBabyDoll]

She probably deleted some system files, you said she's done a reinstall?

Yea she reinstalled everything, at one point she could only run the computer in safe mode. A virus wiped everything clean.

 

[Mantis41]

This is screaming failed hard drive.
If you are able, remove the HDD, place it on a USB cable or caddy and chkdsk from a PC or another laptop. Make sure you check the box 'scan for bad sectors'

I would not re-install windows without checking or just replacing the hard drive first.

 

[Elritha]

This is screaming failed hard drive.
If you are able, remove the HDD, place it on a USB cable or caddy and chkdsk from a PC or another laptop. Make sure you check the box 'scan for bad sectors'

I would not re-install windows without checking or just replacing the hard drive first.

Alternatively you can use the windows boot cd/dvd to access command prompt and use chkdsk. That way there's no need to remove the hard drive from the laptop. I suggest you scan for bad sectors, it'll take awhile depending on the size of the hard drive.

 

[Rydian]

An actual failed harddrive would result in windows not loading at all.

He said the issues were mostly caused by a virus, which makes sense since it's erased any sort of recovery/management tools that could be used to remove it while not touching system files requires for the OS actually running.

Do a "Repair Install" in order to fix windows without wiping personal data.

 

[Elritha]

An actual failed harddrive would result in windows not loading at all.

Not all the time. You can have a drive with damaged sectors that will retain most data, but corrupt where data has been written to the damaged sectors. A thorough scan will mark these sectors as damaged and prevent Windows writing to them in the future.

It could quite possibly be a virus. The poster did say 'uninstall and reinstall everything' which I am assuming means Windows. More information would be helpful though.

 

[Mantis41]

An actual failed harddrive would result in windows not loading at all.

Not all the time. You can have a drive with damaged sectors that will retain most data, but corrupt where data has been written to the damaged sectors. A thorough scan will mark these sectors as damaged and prevent Windows writing to them in the future.

It could quite possibly be a virus. The poster did say 'uninstall and reinstall everything' which I am assuming means Windows. More information would be helpful though.

Thank's Edhel. Was going to post something similar. The information given was a bit vague to make a proper diagnosis.

Cheers

 

[adgloride]

If its less than a year old and the harddrive is broke. Claim on the 1 year guarantee.

 

[Rydian]

An actual failed harddrive would result in windows not loading at all.

Not all the time. You can have a drive with damaged sectors

Then the drive itself would not have failed, it would just have damaged sectors. A failed drive indicates it's entirely unusable.

 

[moose3]

Also you can use a drive fitness test program to check the drive, normally available on the drive manufacturer's site. I had one that had a failed SMART test, the read speed was abysmally slow, but would boot into windows after several mins. If the drive is sound, and the virus already wiped any useable info you would want to save, might as well start clean and do a low level format (write all zeroes to drive, boot sector as well), as no need to clean a system of viruses that is unuseable. Just be careful if the comp has a recovery partition instead of recovery/OS discs.

 

[giratina16]

You've got the chlamydia of computer viruses.

 

[olliepop2000]

HDD manufacturers are sneaky, the drive does low-level marking of bad sectors that are not reported with a chkdsk. I have had it happen to me, a drive once made a hell of a noise for 30 seconds then the next thing i knew i had lost 6GB and no partitioning tool would see the rest.

Edit: some good info

 

[GentleFist]

maybe some people on the net told her she has to remove system32 and she actually did it...
that might be the problem

 

[playallday]

Go get Windows 7 and do a clean install. Then go install Avira and Comodo.

 

[Rydian]

maybe some people on the net told her she has to remove system32 and she actually did it...
that might be the problem

You can't delete system32 from within windows.

QUOTE(Arctic @ Apr 13 2010, 12:28 PM) Go get Windows 7 and do a clean install. Then go install Avira and Comodo.

How about you let them to it to your computer?
What's that? No? Data loss isn't fun? Setting up options again isn't fun? Reinstalling a bunch of programs again isn't fun?

Then don't suggest it to other people so lightheartedly, it's not helpful at all.

 

[playallday]

Go get Windows 7 and do a clean install. Then go install Avira and Comodo.

How about you let them to it to your computer?
What's that? No? Data loss isn't fun? Setting up options again isn't fun? Reinstalling a bunch of programs again isn't fun?

Then don't suggest it to other people so lightheartedly, it's not helpful at all.

Sure, my last clean install I lost around 75GB of games (I tried to backup my games, but Winrar somehow messed them all up). Within a week I had everything back that I needed.

 

[GolenSun550]

maybe some people on the net told her she has to remove system32 and she actually did it...
that might be the problem

Agree,