DBAN will not work on my pc....wont work of usb and wont work of cd... what other ways can i format the hdd?
Viruses rarely just appear on your PC, most of the time it's something to do with downloads/email attachments/browser vulnerabilities etc. Are you certain it's a virus? I agree with what zak said - make sure you have proper drivers for your motherboard, especially if it has something like a JMicron controller - when I first built my PC every time I opened my Computer or accessed the DVD drive in anyway the computer would slow to a crawl, too slow to use and it turned out to be that JMicron controller (the DVD drive was the only thing on it) so I disabled it, connected everything to the chipset's SATA ports and problem solved, no more crashing. It probably could have been solved with proper drivers but it was simpler for me to just disable it in BIOS.
JMicron...hm i dont ever remember installing that driver, its for IDE? i only use the dvd drive for that and funny enough every time i go to my computer i had that problem of it slowing down.
so onto the next subject no im joking ive got so ticked of with it i reinstalled windows, im still in the progress of installing drivers.....im hoping ive solved all my problems...
also, is there a way i can use my IDE dvd drive as sata??
Just try and locate the correct drivers for the IDE controller and it should sort out the crashing.
Yeah I meant slow down sorry. Try here http://www.jmicron.com/Driver.htm
I'm of the opinion that the hard drive is at fault here. It could well be bad sectors on the drive which is causing it to slow down. You might be better off running a util from the manufacture of your hard drive and just check there aren't any errors on it.
I had this issue at work with a customers laptop, we thought we fixed it so sent the customer off with it. They came back a few days later with it, same problem only ten times worse !
I realise its a six month old drive but that doesn't stop it from developing any bad sectors.
You don't usually need the invoice if you go direct to the manufacturer. Western Digital didn't ask me for anything other than the serial number.
As we stated earlier in the thread, get things backed up then run the tests in the software from whoever makes your drive. For instance, Western Digital do the Data Lifeguard Diagnostics - it won't necessarily tell you if the drive is faulty or not, but it will do in 90% of instances.
I asked earlier if the hard drive activity LED is lit up constantly when the machine slows down? Is it on constantly, flickers or flickers in a consistent pattern?
Yeah check the drive's SMART data to be sure but it doesn't sound like that's the problem to me. Get those drivers installed!
Most SMART programs will warn you if something isn't OK, check the reallocated sector count, raw data column - it should be 0.
As long as the drive gets formatted, even just a quick format, then there is NO chance of any virusis being left over. Assuming that the file they infected was actally on C:. It is perfectly possible that he has downloaded a no-cd or a driver that is infected and keeps re-installing it. Either way though formatting C: won't make it any better.I would use Boot n Nuke to properly wipe the hard drive as it sounds like traces of Viruses are being left over from previous installs.
On a current hard disk, writing 0's to the entire drive once will make it impossible to recover any data.I do not know of software that can competely wipe the hard drive that nobody can recover but the above suggestion is as good as it gets, as far as I am aware.
here is an article which discusses this issue a bit and has links to some other information.
It appears that it was theoretically possible to recover overwritten data on drives that used a stepper motor to position the head because they wouldn't line up totally with the previously written track and leave some data sticking out. This however requires examining the disk with a microscope and has a very high error rate. On a modern drive the data density is so high that the error in recovering data gets so high that it becomes impossible.
Back on topic...
Are these pictures on the USB drive or on C: ? How is USB performance in general, you mention that copying the files onto the USB drive was slow. Have you got a different USB device you could check performace with?
I personally favour driver issues. Make sure that all your chipset drivers are up-to-date. Your motherboard manufacturer website should make all the drivers you need available for download.
I think boot n nuke writes 0s to the entire drive but I have been told that there is software you can get that makes it possible to recover on any drive, but the more times it has had different sets of data in different areas the harder it is I think.
I always thought that the only way to make data completely unrecoverable was to physically destroy the HDD.
I would boot n nuke it as this will do a good job, take note though that it will format all partitions on every hdd in the system, and even flash sticks etc if any are present. It deletes all partitions and afterwards you have to re-partition the drive.
E6850@ 3700MHz / 6GB DDR2 / 500GB SATAII / nVidia 7800 GTX / Lian Li Plus7B
DBAN has an option to just zero the drive but for secure erasing random data is better, followed by a zero pass. NO software could recover ANYTHING after even zeroing the drive. A full wipe isn't necessary to erase viruses, just running it for about 5 seconds would erase any data in the MBR/partition table so to the computer it would look like a new drive, yeah you could possibly recover data after doing this because it doesn't have time to overwrite the whole data area but it's enough to get rid of any virus.
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