help fix needed

marmalize

a friend has given me her sons dell inspiron to try and fix...aparently it had over 350 viruses?someone else tried to fix and the result was it was then unable to even boot up..(i am by no means a techie so any help has to be in words suitable for an idiot please)..on pressing the on button i get a black screen showing options to repair faults(recommended) or start up normally

the normal start up gives me the following:
checking file system on E:
the type of file system is NTFS
volume label is RECOVERY
one of your disks needs to be checked for consistancy.youmay cancel this check but is recommended
windows will now check the disk
an unspecified error occured(then ...nothing)

the check for repairs gives me a 10 minute 'searching for repairs' screen then 'the repair was not succesfull(then black screen)

then if you leave it for a while it goes to the blue screen with the 'system crash' message..

if i try to start it in safe mode it checks the drivers then hangs and after about 10 mins it finishes the check but goes back to black screen

what next ? is it 'fubar' ? ...

aliEnRIK

Probably needs formatting and the operating system reinstalling

fwor

Which version of Windows is on it? Do you have installation media for that version of Windows?

If so, it would be worth booting the PC from that CD/DVD, going to the Recovery Console and running chkdsk, then attempt a repair install.

I personally have never seen an error message of "searching for repairs" from a Windows-based PC, so if that is literally the wording you are seeing, I'd be suspicious that it's probably still virus-infected.

If there is no data on it that the owner cares about, I would reformat the hard disk and install the OS from scratch.

marmalize

i think the wording is 'launch startup repairs'(recommended)..
'startup repair is checking your system for problems'
attempting repairs.........
repairing disc errors,this might take over an hour to complete...
the repairs were not succesfull....

i would think it will be w7 as laptop is only 12 months old
no op sys disk(all original packing and disks thrown away!!!! they barely know how to turn the laptop on!!)

i still think it is full of viruses but i can't even get it started in safe mode to run spybot or malwarebytes...??????????

what now??

fwor

If it can't fix disk errors, then it sounds like HDD failure.

I'd try booting it from SystemRescueCD and take a look at the hard disk with GPARTED, which has a facility to check the disk. If that fails, try the HDD maker's diagnostic tools. If that fails, time for a new HDD...

Hammyman

fwor wrote: »

If it can't fix disk errors, then it sounds like HDD failure.
.

Not really...more a cas of pulling the power whilst being written to on multiple occasions due to locking up from malware.

Personally, I'd shove ubuntu on it if there's that much malware. It takes real effort to get that infected and as they're obvoiusly blithering idiots computer wise, putting a Linux distro on and leaving them as little chance as possible to change anything (set up user accounts properly) they'll do a lot better.

marmalize

can't get it to boot at all now(had it up in safe mode once) now it just goes through the startup repairs and then boot choice but then goes to black screen and no buttons will work not even on/off...

fwor

Hammyman wrote: »

Not really...more a cas of pulling the power whilst being written to on multiple occasions due to locking up from malware.

Maybe you're right - it all depends what is reporting the errors. If it's chkdsk or an equivalent, then there's no reason why it should not fix the errors at filesystem level, no matter how many times the power has been pulled.

Of course, fixing the filesystem errors will be no guarantee that Windows will then boot successfully.

I personally would check with the owners before installing Ubuntu on it...

marmalize wrote: »

can't get it to boot at all now(had it up in safe mode once) now it just goes through the startup repairs and then boot choice but then goes to black screen and no buttons will work not even on/off...

Try any other bootable CD, such as SystemRescue, which I linked to above. You may need to enter the BIOS setup to change the boot order so that it boots from CD before trying what sounds to be a badly corrupted HDD.

marmalize

thanks for all your replies ...i think i will pass it back to the owners to sort out as i think it is out of my scope of knowledge to try and repair . thanks

closed

If they don't need any data, you could try a factory restore, but the worrying thing is the e: drive appears corrupt, and normally that won't be touched by the operating system, which points more towards a physical disk problem

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/kcs/document?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&docid=DSN_3E48AE3870775D64E040A68F5B2877D4&isLegacy=true

Hammyman

fwor wrote: »

Maybe you're right - it all depends what is reporting the errors. If it's chkdsk or an equivalent, then there's no reason why it should not fix the errors at filesystem level, no matter how many times the power has been pulled.

I have had them in when they've been so corrupted from improper shutdowns that only writing zeros to the entire drive and starting again has sorted it.