Computer repair questions

Darian929

Hey guys, I just had a quick question. Most of the time I fix computer for people, and most times they tell me to clean it out and remove viruses.... my question is whats the best way to clean up the computer, as in making it a bit faster, and as far as removing viruses what would you recommend? Is the easiest way to clean up and speed up the computer by doing hard drive cleanup and then defraging? Any input would help.

dynamik

Once it's compromised, it's compromised. I'd do a reinstall to be safe.

JDMurray

The best way to clean and defrag is not to boot off the disk you are cleaning. Instead, boot off a USB drive or LiveCD that has the utilities needed to clean and defrag a Windows system partition. You'll need to use several boot-and-clean utilites, like F-PROT, Avira AntiVir, UltimateBootCD, and SystemRescueCd, to be sure that you've cleaned as much crud as you can.

If you are worried about nasty, uncleanable things like rootkits, the only sure method of cleaning is reformat disk, reinstall OS and apps, and restore data file backups.

Darian929

my problem is im working on an HP pavilion... and when I try to select the boot order to boot from windows xp original cd, it will go and stay on a black screen.... same thing happens if I press f1 to go into bios to change boot order, it will stay on a black screen and do nothing unless i restart the pc or press ctlr+alt+del. So my question is... If i use UBCD to delete the entire HDD, and then insert the windows xp cd will it automatically boot onto cd mandatory? Just want to make sure I dont wipe the HDD out and then It wont boot into anything.

aordal

take the harddrive out and then turn the machine on and see if you can get into BIOS. if not you may have to flash it. im sure you can find instructions on hps website for doing that

Darian929

I did try to boot from Ultimate boot cd I just made and it will not recognize it... I did upgrade the bios with the utility hp has on their site but nothing.

macdude

Do you see your cdrom drive in the bios? I would look in there and make sure it is listed if it try your cds on another computer.

If it is not, I would check the ide/sata connection the drive.

Darian929

Macdude problem is I cant get into bios... when I try get into bios by pressing f1 or trying to select boot order by pressing ESC at beginning of boot up, it will just take me to a black screen and stay there. I dont know seems like the previous person that fixed her computer really messed it up.Also I even tried to use another cd drive I had from my own computer and hooked it up to her computer but nothing.. it still wouldn't boot up to cd. I did disconnect the HDD like aordal told me and tried to go into bios but same thing happened. I cant boot up from windows xp cd or Ultimate boot cd. I guess Ill just remove some crap and stuff.. anyone know good software that cleans out a lot of unnecessary files on your computer? Thanks everyone for advices.

skrpune

does the computer boot up at all regularly? What happens when you simply turn it on, does it boot off the HD & does it boot ok? Can it boot into safe mode? Is it infected, and if so, do you know with what or can you describe the symptoms? What's the root problem you're trying to fix?

By the way, this doesn't seem to be an uncommon problem. I googled "can't get into bios hp pavillion" and got lots of hits. The solution to the problem may depend on what caused the problem in the first place, and knowing what else you are able to do & what happens when you try to do a normal boot might help root out the issue. What else can you tell us about this puppy?

Darian929

hey guys, I just ended up hooking the hdd to my own computer and booting from cdand then deleting the windows partitions, and now everything works well, put the hdd back into her computer and installed the drivers

genXrcist

Next time use one of these (BYTECC BT-300 USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Adapter - Retail, Bytecc USB 2.0 Drive Mate - BYTECC - TopMicroUSA) to slave the drive, delete/create a new partition and format. Then you can put it back into the problem PC chassis and boot to CD to re-install Windows.

The fact that you couldn't get into BIOS while the HDD was connected doesn't make sense. Are you saying that once you re-installed Windows onto the HDD that you can now boot to BIOS?

If not, I would look into removing/re-inserting the CMOS on the MoBo and then flashing the BIOS. Sounds to me like a security setting to prevent users from configuring (i.e. screwing up) their BIOS settings.

Darian929

hey gen, i will need to buy that USB adapter to IDE because its very useful, you know after i reformatted the drive and installed windows I didn't check if i could get into bios, I was really just fed up with that pc and needed to move on. I did remove the CMOS battery before all of that but nothing happened I still couldn't get into bios. Im pretty sure that after the re-installation of windows xp the bios should be alright.

genXrcist

Darian929 wrote: »

hey gen, i will need to buy that USB adapter to IDE because its very useful, you know after i reformatted the drive and installed windows I didn't check if i could get into bios, I was really just fed up with that pc and needed to move on. I did remove the CMOS battery before all of that but nothing happened I still couldn't get into bios. Im pretty sure that after the re-installation of windows xp the bios should be alright.

It's very useful! I've saved a lot of data with one of these many times over. Feels good to be a hero.

Well, the thing is that Windows has nothing to do with whether or not BIOS is accessible. I mean, you could have 0 HDD's in there and the POST would still pass allowing you to get into the BIOS, where it would of course be reported as missing. But in your case, it sounded like the HDD when in place, was preventing you from even accessing the BIOS. If there was something wrong with the HDD hardware wise perhaps, maybe, I could see it preventing BIOS access but other than that it's a mystery to me.

Glad to hear you found a fix though.