Dodgy as hell pc problem

[BloodOmen]

Right, I decided to format today as i've not done it for about 4 months now so I format this morning/stuck windows 7 back on and about 3 hours after the format the hard drive literally formats itself without any sort of warning or error message.

Got me well confused, did a diagnostic on the hard drive and everything came back fine nothing was damaged or anything so i've narrowed it down to 2 things, 1) virus (which is unlikely) or 2) i've made it format by accident.

Anyone else had a similar problem?

 

[GimmlyThe3rd]

Any more info? What do you mean formats its self? boot in Dos or hang it off another computer and see if the data is still there.

 

[BloodOmen]

just restarted, no bsod or anything almost as if someone pressed the reset switch and then upon trying to boot back up it hangs and said something like "Please insert system disk" so I stuck windows 7 back in and it went to the installation screen and normally where it would have the option to format drives for a clean installion it was already formatted and the partitions were gone.

 

[GimmlyThe3rd]

Hm, weird, did you try the recovery from the disk? It said no installation was found?

 

[BloodOmen]

there was nothing to recover, the drives were blank and had 100%/100% unused space, it was so mind boggling and rather annoying at the same time as I hate formats.

 

[Lamp]

ghosts in the machine

 

[caLLous]

You format every 4 months?? I'm lucky if I get around to doing it annually, if that. :\

But imo every 4 months is way overkill..

 

[BloodOmen]

You format every 4 months?? I'm lucky if I get around to doing it annually, if that. :\

But imo every 4 months is way overkill..

Not when you install/uninstall as much crap as I do.

 

[ST^]

Not when you install/uninstall as much crap as I do.

Still overkill unless it's malware you're installing a lot of.

 

[Raven]

I formatted the other week, 1st time since installing windows 7. I only did it because I decided to ramp up my security so though it best to have a fresh start.

It's not something you need to do very often, if ever unless you download dodgy porn.

 

[caLLous]

I'm actually contemplating it right this instant, I have win7 on a 1tb disk and I just encrypted it in place with Truecrypt. Then I realised that about 80% of the stuff on there is not really encrypt-worthy (probably none of it is encrypt-worthy in the greater scheme of things but I mean non-OS stuff in this instance) and just bogging everything down.

So, an encrypted 250gb system partition for Win7 on the drive and the rest for just.... stuff (game installs, etc)? I haven't done partitions for years...

 

[Zenith.UK]

Sounds like either the MBR/bootloader has been wiped, or your HDD is dying a death.
Try using a program like HDtune to read off the SMART information and look for the "current sector pending" figure.
You might want to consider the diagnostic program from the HDD manufacturer as that can pinpoint some problems as well.

DON'T try to access or read the drive unless you're performing an image capture or drive recovery. You might just be making future recovery harder for yourself.

 

[GimmlyThe3rd]

Seems strange, I'd put money on the drive near death as well, make/model and age?

A wiped MBR/boot loader (easy fix too, fixmbr or fixboot in dos) would not stop windows detecting petitions from the recovery wizard or installer.

 

[BloodOmen]

well after the failies I went about dl'ing speed fan again just on the offchance its not the HD and these were the results. (this is idle with no major programs/games running)




58c idle and its still rising, new coat of thermal paste due on the cpu me thinks. Still doesnt explain why it auto formatted tho. If I started a game up now at the rate that temp is rising i'm sure my PC would just /suicide.


Anyway bbl, i'll go dig the wifes laptop out.

 

[GimmlyThe3rd]

And you behind a router firewall yes? Because if you install and not behind a router or a firewall you will get auto infected by a irc bot(aka worm) in seconds. If you using XP that is.

58C is crazy temp and no good, like same as my laptop ... Shouldn't be over 50 really, I've had over clocked CPU;s under 50.

 

[BloodOmen]

And you behind a router firewall yes? Because if you install and not behind a router or a firewall you will get auto infected by a irc bot(aka worm) in seconds. If you using XP that is.

58C is crazy temp and no good, like same as my laptop ... Shouldn't be over 50 really, I've had over clocked CPU;s under 50.

nah using windows 7 ultimate (but have a firewall) and yea the temp is bs, when I got the cpu it was running at 30-36c idle, going to pick up some thermal paste and replace it until then I just wont do any major CPU intensive stuff on the pc (so far its been holding)

 

[BloodOmen]

arrr arctic silver did the job, 60c now with 2x daoc accounts open Sc2, Darkspore and Team Fortress 2 all open at once.