Jump to content

NOT a Happy Camper


Hana

Recommended Posts

Friday morning, end of the week, typical day. Wake up, boot up the PC, go make coffee, watch the news until my daughter goes off to school. Only, today isn't typical. Came back to the office to find my PC in a constant reboot, never getting any further than just entering the Windows booting logo before it restarts. It won't even boot into Safe Mode. Drivers load - restart.I blame a certain app I was trying to install yesterday. I guess I screwed up, following instructions to get the Bethesda folder out of Read only mode by disabling the security access. After playing around with that I was getting Norton intrusion attack alerts. No matter how many it blocked something has obviously got in. So much for trusting others for my security. Maybe others shouldn't tell people to do that.Time to build that new PC I suppose.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 274
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Hana

    82

  • Conner

    69

  • Arthmoor

    67

  • Dwip

    32

Top Posters In This Topic

You're going to replace your PC because you snagged yourself a virus?? I mean, if you were already going to replace the PC anyway and just hadn't gotten to it, I can understand that building a new one isn't that much more effort than reinstalling everything including the OS, but otherwise it's a pretty expensive resolution to a problem that might be fixable by far less expensive means...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ouch. That's got to suck. You don't have another drive in the hosue that's available to use as a boot device so you can have the second one hooked up to try and clean it?What sort of problem were you having that you needed to take the Bethesda folder out of whatever mode it was stuck in?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ouch. That sort of thing is never fun.On the bright side, if you were looking for a good excuse to build the new PC, well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's what I'm thinking too. If you've got another hard drive lying about you could install it as a temporary boot drive to use to disinfect the drive that you can no longer boot from currently.If you don't have a spare drive, you could wipe the drive that's having problems and install Windows again clean and then reinstall everything else. You'd lose some data that way, but avoid having to replace the computer itself. Not pleasant and very time consuming, but a whole lot cheaper.But, yes, as Dwip says, if you were looking for an excuse to build a new PC, I suppose this could certainly qualify.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm back, on my new rig.There's just something wicked and satisfying about using IE8 to download FireFox.And yes, building a new setup appears to be an extreme measure to a boot virus but I had been planning on it for awhile now. Mentioned it over on the blog at the time I was redecorating my office (which still isn't finished, lol). No, I could not even boot from the Windows disc, not even after fixmbr. I ran Norton from CD and it found 1 trojan but obviously not the main issue. Rather than waste hours fiddling with a complete re-install of XP, I preferred to spend those hours buying and building brand new. Man, don't you just love how fast a brand new PC boots? :)

What sort of problem were you having that you needed to take the Bethesda folder out of whatever mode it was stuck in?
Boss 1.6 had a problem with the new masterlist updater as you probably know by now via various comments, one of them me at Nexus. The ReadMe (yes, I read it!) says it requires the Boss folder to not be Read-Only, which it was. I tried everything to get it out of read-only, including removing security on those folders.At the same time as doing that, it seems Nexus was attacked with a virus on their downloads pages from some Google ad they had running. I wondered why I was suddenly getting intrusion attack notices, and every time I went to Nexus, for some odd reason my Adobe PDF reader and Java were always trying to "access the internet" and run... something. I didn't find out about the attack there until later this morning. So, I believe I got hit with something as a combination of the two things.I still have my old HD slaved into this new one so I can run a better scan on it to fix it. I may put it back in my old box for a 2nd PC if it's fixable. Would be good for a 2nd copy of Oblivion for testing and/or Nehrim.For those interested, the new rig is;Gigabyte P55-USB3 motherboardIntel i5 760 2.8Ghz Quad Core CPU4G RAMNvidia GTX460 1G GPUa new WD 1TB HDa new Samsung DVD-RWWindows 7 Pro 64bita new HAF 922 Full Tower case (which is amazingly quiet compared to my old case, I'm in heaven)Total approx cost $1150.00So, time for all the fun of re-installing stuffs. At least I didn't lose anything. :rolleyes:
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, considering the two I ported over from my previous PC, yes, not only a 2nd HD but a 3rd. Which is pretty moot with a 1TB master HD anyway. What in the world would one need 2 DVD drives for?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Backup HDs FTW, especially with Win 7's backup features. Which is to say that I've had more HD failures than anybody I know except MAYBE Samson, and I'm paranoid.2nd DVD is a convenience thing so I can avoid disc swaps all day long. It's pretty common for, say, the Oblivion disc to live in one drive and the other to rotate between other games and movies. Handy for TV shows, too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Indeed, welcome back. Oh yes, now that you mention it, I do recall you saying that. How is the office redecoration going?I'll second Dwip's question: why only 4gb of ram? It looked to me like the price of ram was on the downswing once again. I think TigerDirect had 4gb for $69 the other day, in fact...Sounds like a nice video card and sweet hard drive, but I also favor multiple hard drives over one really big one in most cases.Salvaging the old one as a backup PC for testing mods and such sounds like a good plan to me.Meh, I've done the dual DVD drives before and I found myself primarily using one of them all the time and the second one next to never anyway. So I stopped configuring systems that way.I believe it's called bookmarks.html and can be found in C:Program Files (x86)Mozilla Firefoxdefaultsprofile, but your mileage may vary. ;)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The bookmark file, along with the rest of your profile will live in:C:UsersApplication DataMozillaFirefoxProfilesa4sc5vz7.defaultYou should be able to find something like that under the Documents & Settings folder in XP.I also have to wonder - why not at least 6GB so you could take advantage of increased memory use to make Oblivion that much happier? :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The file I'd found must've been Chrome's or a remnant from the last time I told Firefox to save/export my bookmarks then. Sorry about that.And, yes, thankfully I rarely visit Nexus myself but my son had been trying to find the mods from that article Dwip had shared with us the other day and told me all about what was going on over there earlier tonight.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hm, weird. I found that strangely named .default folder, copied it over, and it only had about a 1/4 of my bookmarks in it. Meh. Who needs Mudbytes bookmarked anyway, :lol:@Conner, the office has stalemated for about a month, for no real reason except I'm lazy. Really only thing left is to put together the new desk and haul all the crap back in that hangs out here.And yes guys, I probably will get more RAM, 4 just seemed enough at the time. Someone's going to have to teach me about that LAA patch thingy.So, this sucks. The new PSU we bought for my son didn't work. That seems to be just about my kinda luck. Yeah, we bought him a new upgraded system as well, he copied everything I got except for the case and he needed a better PSU.Did a full scan with Norton today, it found a couple of downloaders which may or may not have been a result of the Nexus thing. On that same note, sad that Nexus is still nerfed. I still haven't got Oblivion re-installed :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, if MudBytes was the only significant bookmark lost, I'd agree, but if it really was only about a quarter of your bookmarks, that's not very cool. (Opera and Chrome both sync your bookmarks to external servers for you, incidentally...)Ah, that I can relate to a little too well. Good luck finding motivation to finish it off then. :)*points at Samson ever so subtly at the mention of the LAA patch*Can you return it for exchange credit at least?So, is it Nexus that's nerfed or Google's searching of Nexus? (My son had led me to believe it was a problem at Google's end.)It's a lot to reinstall considering all the mods and such you'd been running.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I guess the problem's at Google's end, they haven't yet updated Nexus site as safe, so I (and many others) still get serious warnings going there.I'm hoping we can return the PSU for exchange. After spending that much money there they better! lolTo the resident guru's who have forged ahead into the world of Win7 before me: so, TES4Edit needs a dx9 dll, can you point me to where to get one and where to put it?Almost got a base install finished. Now to remember which mods I actually had installed ....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

*nod* That makes complete sense to me.No kidding. :lol:I haven't yet forged ahead to Win7 but it seems to me that you ought to be able to grab a copy of DirectX 9 from Microsoft directly, unless you really just need the dx9.dll file by itself somehow. :whistle:Fortunately, I believe you'd posted your load order not too long ago on Samson's blog so you could start with that and then just try to catch back up on whatever you'd added since. Of course, tracking down that particular post may take some mild doing, but the search box on his sidebar does seem to work for it, more or less, as a starting point. :shrug:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I know there's an LAA patch over on fo3nexus.com, but I don't know where atm, and their search function is borked still due to the damn virus warnings. The one I have here (if I can find it now) came from a different source. It's of little value without >4GB of memory though.As Conner points out, go get the DirectX installer for version 9. That will satisfy TES4Edit along with any quirkiness Oblivion might throw at you too for trying to use the fake one in Win7.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ouch, that sounds nasty.I'm also paranoid, but I back up externally, I regularly transfer all 42GB of Oblivion onto an external HD, and my work files are backed up on so many DVD's I have thoroughly confused myself (I need version control for my CV and photo albums!)I'm glad I've not been on Nexus much, except at work (uh-oh, that would explain a thing or two).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oddly enough, I'm about as paranoid about hard drive failures as Dwip, Samson, and Sigurd, but I haven't been nearly as religious about backups as I know I need to be. :shrug:Hmm, CVS for daily computer use.. wait, isn't that just incremental backups?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's called writing on the DVD's.:facepalm:
:lol: Well' date=' I was thinking more along the lines of legit CVS, but, yeah, that really does help. It only requires a nice sharpie, not even fancy labels. ;)
Hate the UAC. It needs to die' date=' in a fire.[/quote']Huh? Hmm, in Oblivion.. Universal Alternate Companions? Or in Television.. Universe of Academic wrestling Competitors? Or..? whistle.gif
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×
×
  • Create New...