1. #1

    Problems with windows updates and hard drive...

    So last night my wifes PC was working perfectly fine. It looks like an automatic windows update was run, a friend may have run the update since we turned them off at one point. Now when she boots into windows, 1 out of 5 times it says it cant find a bootable device, and when I do get into safe mode and do a system restore, it doesn't help. The main problem is once into windows, the start menu crashes, freezes the PC in general and she is forced to restart. The cursor is also bigger than normal and black with white outline instead of the normal small white cursor.

    None of this happens in safe mode, does this give me hope that its a software problem and not the harddrive itself?

    The OS is Windows Vista 32 bit.

    Let me know what kind of information you need, though I am not sure if I can get all the specs with the PC in its current state; it was a prebuilt one from a christmas sale a few years ago on Cyberpowerpc or some site like that. Similar to newegg site selling prebuilt PCs.

    We also noticed recently that after the PC goes into sleep mode, the USB mouse and keyboard wont respond, this only happened recently.


    On a related note, I swear my friends crash all my PCs all the time, I am not letting them near these machines ever again. In the same week, my friend managed to get the windows update virus on 3 PCs, one of which was mine. He swears he only goes on facebook. He crashed my old PC 3-4 times and I had to do system restores and one reformat and now this!



    Edit: Seems the hard drive is now not being found in the bios... I was able to find it before. And now it found it on a full shutdown instead of a restart... I am gonna backup some of her game files (mainly skyrim) and her photos/videos just incase, I should be able to access my extra PC from safemode with network....
    Last edited by masterprtzl; 2011-11-22 at 05:05 PM.

  2. #2
    Field Marshal
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    May 2011
    Location
    Convert to Raid - Aerie Peak U.S.
    Posts
    62
    If I may make the suggestion, I would first go into the bios and restore the bios to system defaults. Then I would suggest performing a system restore using the Vista DVD. At some point when you can find the time I would recommend updating to 7 as I find it runs smoother on pc's than Vista with basically the same requirements.

    Here is a link that goes into detail with the system restore.
    http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tuto...y-environment/

  3. #3
    yea we are looking into upgrading her to windows 7. Bios hasn't been touched since we bought the PC so it should be at default... :/

    ---------- Post added 2011-11-23 at 01:01 AM ----------

    bumping, anyone else have any ideas?

    ---------- Post added 2011-11-23 at 02:19 AM ----------

    Looks like a bad hard drive :/ on the reformat menu, and selecting which drive to use for Windows installation it has a warning that the drive may fail soon ugh what a pain in the ass

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •