Need fast help with e machine

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 5:45 pm

Had a friend call today saying her box wasnt working right. Lots or GPF's and what not. Anyways i ran the SFC and it found 3 corrupt files which were replaced from the win98 disk went to reboot and the damned thing will get to the windows logo and reboot from there. It does the same thing trying to go to safe mode. I slapped a floppy in and was gonna try to install on top and i get a message saying "the computer already has an operating system installed and cannot be upgraded from this disk" or something to that affect. It stays in a constant state of rebooting. Reboot, win logo, reboot, win logo.....wtf is up with this thing???

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 5:56 pm

Ze e-Machines are Verrrrry vierd. Does the have the recovery CD that came with it? My mom has one that crashed BAD a while back and I got a bunch of that mess. I just put the recovery CD in it and it reinstalled all it needed to reinstall and all is well. If she doesn't have it, you may try their website to see what model it is and see if they won't send her one. My mom's is a 500e I stink. Hope this helps. If not, you may have to do a low level format. Or format it period and reinstall windows. And hope that you can find all of the drivers. Lemme know if you need the drivers that are on the CD I have and I'd be more than happy to put them on my server so you can download them if it comes down to that. eGo

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 6:18 pm

she has the restore cd but i was worried that it might erase some stuff she wants to keep. will it not set it back like it was new? i wanted to keep from formatting if possible. prior to all this the thing wouldn't do much of anything. try to open my computer and you get an explorer error. try to open my documents same thing.

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 6:22 pm

If the restore CD for hers is anything like the one for my mom's.. It will give you a menu much like the 98 boot CD does. It will ask you if you want to reinstall windows/format and reinstall windows/ and something else. So you may be able to just reinstall windows and not have to worry about it. If it's just files that she's wanting to keep try and ghost the drive and then install on top of that. Dunno if any of this is helpful or not. I'm sure if there are other ways one of the Big Boys will step in at any moment now.. FP or Blade.. Somebody.. lol.. eGo

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 6:29 pm

one thing i did notice is that her cable modem activity light was going nonstop even after i closed everything except explorer, systray and zonealram. she just got it a few weeks ago and the tech had trouble getting it to work after he installed the nice. she took it to a local shop and they said she had 200+ viruses kicking around in there. I'm thinking it may still be sick somehow. It needs a format bad but i dont think she's for all that at the moment

eGoCeNTRoNiX · Post by **eGoCeNTRoNiX** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 6:33 pm

Sounds like it could have been Klez.. That's a mean little sucker.. what kind of stuff is she trying to avoid losing? I had a problem with a friend of mine that had ME and had a cable modem and it just took installing the NIC over again and then installing the Cable modem drivers.. But you obviously can't get that far. Luckily enough we were able to back up the stuff she didn't want to lose before we tried to fix it. But Ghosting it may be her only option to get it back.. But like I said, FP or somebody with a little more experience and knowledge will surely chime in. eGo OH! and about that light on the modem. Is it blinking or does it just stay on? If it's a motorola surfboard it's gonna stay on all the time. My friends does that too.. Just blinks when it's transferring info.

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 6:51 pm

no its blinking

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 7:08 pm

I'm concerned about the viruses. If it's got Klez doing a re-install is pointless. Klez infects ALL your EXE files eventually making the system totally unstable.

If you have an anti-virus program installed on your computer (and I would hope you do) then I'd pull her drive and connect it to your computer as a spare and then run a virus scan on her whole drive from your operating system. Do a scandisk first.

If you AV software is up to date you don't have to worry about getting infected from her drive, and besides that can't happen anyway unless you execute and infected EXE file from her drive which you're not likely to do.

Hokay, once you kill the viruses then you can put the drive back in her computer and try to re-install Windows. I assume this is WinME or Win98? You should be able to just boot from the Windows CD and run the installer - just do a refresh install over itself. The problem is that if you have an OEM copy of Windows, that CD may not allow you to run the installer on a system with Windows already on it. Some OEM versions that come with computers will only install on a blank drive.

Now the problem with Klez is that it trashes the registry so you REALLY need to run the Klez cleaning tool (free from Symantect's site) once you get her system working: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/av ... .tool.html

There's a couple of other viruses that have special tools if you check the symantec site here: http://securityresponse.symantec.com

Hope this helps...

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 7:22 pm

now the klez tool is run from safe mode right? thing is it wont even go to safe mode. it does the rebooting shit there too

Busby · Post by **Busby** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 7:33 pm

I'd do what FP says and run AV software on your computer with her drive as a spare. Try pulling the NIC and booting the compter and see what happens.

Absolut Talent · Post by **Absolut Talent** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 9:12 pm

i think i may have a solution without a whole lot of thinking

first see if you can access the harddrive if it was set as slave, but this requires another harddrive to be formatted and set as a primary with the OS installed. If you can acess the harddrive as a slave, then copy the files she wants from the salve to the new master harddrive.

go ahead and take out the new master and put the orgional master back into it. format it.
then put the 2nd master that you copied everything to and set it as a slave. Copy all her files back and your all set

thats what I do for reformatting, back it all up to another harddrive and put it back afterwards

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 9:36 pm

well i did what FP said and it had no viruses. i can access the drive when its hooked up to mine and open all her files. however when i put it back in hers it refuses to boot. i may try what you said AT, is there a way to fix the MBR? When it boots it automatically goes to the screen where you can select normal or safe and safe is already highlighted. No matter which option i try its still the same end result.

TruckStuff · Post by **TruckStuff** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 9:38 pm

you can delete the MBR using "fdisk /mbr" (someone correct me if I am wrong). Then when you reboot, it will be rebuilt. Good luck with that though... not holding my breath.

BTW, have you checked to see if the CPU has a fan? If so, is it still operating?

blade_146 · Post by **blade_146** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 10:03 pm

yep cpu fan works fine and i just installed a new PSU in it about 2 months ago.

canton_kid · Post by **canton_kid** » Mon Dec 16, 2002 11:12 pm

If this is 98 SE and the only thiing wrong is that the sytem is in a reboot loop it is a simple problem with a simple fix most likely. Could be the same problem in other versions too?I will look for the answer and see if I can find it
Unfortunately I cannot remember what files need to be replaced!

I had the same problem awhile back on another system. When booting the system got to the windows logo then said it is now safe to shut down your system or now shutting down, something like that. Is that like what is happening? Also I think it would sometimes just shut down and start up again on it's own at that logo. It would not boot into windows at all, If I recall corectly even safe mode did not work and I don't think I could boot to dos from the hardrive either.

It was two files for windows that needed replaced, but I forget what two. Check Symantic for timing errors! I think that was how I found the fix. Symatic Sytem works 2000 can cause a timming error if I remember correctly and the fix for that was the fix for my system. Someone my wife worked with had the same problem but did not have System works 2000 installed on their system.

To fix the problem all I had to do was copy those two files from a working computer to floppie then copy to the non-working system into the correct directory overwriting the files that were there already.
Just used the boot disk to get to dos and dos commands to copy from floppie.

Look for timming error answers, and if you find one that says 2 files need replaced jsut copy fromyours to a floppie if you have the same version.

I will look for the answer and see if I can find it, but that's what I would look for in the mean time.
If I find again it I'll post it here.

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Need fast help with e machine

Need fast help with e machine

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