Now I am no computer doctor but someone (who I am sure was trying to scam me) over the phone said that this was a bad thing:



Sooooo, I am guessing my "disk" has a problem? o__o
I am not quite sure how to go about fixing it. What do you guys think?

Yeah, next time the guy calls just give him your credit card number. Should fix your disk.

No you have a virus. I don't even know what that is you posted. I honestly don't have a clue what any of that shit you said means. But it's so sketchy I already know its a virus.

I know, right? I should have given him all my money to fix a problem I did not know I even had.

Can't tell if serious.

The Windows Event Log is paranoid and has Warnings and Errors all over the place that 99.99% of the time can be safely ignored. This is simply a scam to part the ignorant from their money.

That sets me a bit straight. I have never seen or heard of the Event Log, but seeing all these warning messages did scare me. Seriously, it is every 5 seconds with this thing.

To be more clear about the person that called me, he said they had been getting my error reports and that my firewall and motherboard was corrupted. >_>

I got a call from someone the other day saying there was an issue with my Windows computer. I asked what was wrong, and she asked me to turn it on and see. I told her it was on, and she said "Oh, so you see the issue?" My response was something like "The issue is that you're fucking with my Borderlands time" and then I hung up. I assumed it was some sort of scam.

I'm assuming you also got a scam call. Unless the person who called was someone you knew?

lol. Definitely scam. These are harddrive errors, not motherboard or software related.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244780

A common cause for such errors are read errors. This could be a hardware defect, but 99% of the time it's just some program (or trojan, or toolbar (=spyware)) trying to access parts of your drive they are not allowed to or maybe a usb stick that isn't connected anymore.

To be fair, I also have Warnings in: Dhcp, b57w2k, ftdisk, and Tcpip.
Then there are a few Errors in the following: W32Time, Windows Update Agent, DCOM, and Service Control Manager.

This is all under System, by the way. Applications has all the viruses...

Surprised you guys here haven't really heard about these before.

They've been calling Australia and New Zealand for about the last 3 years or so, mostly out of India on VOIP lines so the telecom companies claim that they can't do anything to stop them (well they can, it's just not easy and they can't be bothered).

They do a variety of things to try and get people to give them money. More recently they tend to get people to go to a website to download a remote-access program and install it so they can take over your mouse (apparently directing people to open windows event viewer was too time-consuming with noobs) and go to the event viewer to show you all of the errors. Then they scare people and say you have to buy their software to fix the errors etc. Even more recently, they've now been calling up people who paid them 18-24 months ago saying the problem has come back and they need to pay more money for an updated version of the software to fix it properly.

They often claim to be calling from Microsoft or even 'Windows'. They're script monkeys that only do exactly what is written down in front of them, and most of them seem to genuinely believe they are hired by Microsoft and/or are offering a legitimate service that will fix people's computers.

When we were staying with my bf's mum, she got a phone call from these people and had no idea what they were talking about. My mum and dad have had a couple. My uncle got one and played along, wasting the guy's time by sitting at his desk (not at his computer) and telling him he was doing all the steps they instructed but that they weren't working etc.

That probably is a bad thing, just to let you know. There shouldn't be a warning spitting out every 5-10 seconds. My Event Viewer only has like 5 warnings per day.

You should be able to select one and get some general details on it. It could be a bad driver or a service that keeps trying to find a missing file. Obviously it isn't impeding you from anything (and warning-level issues sometimes aren't even issues), so you can also just keep ignoring it.

Just an update, my (main) computer is now blue screening, and I cannot get around it with Safe Mode as it still blue screens.

I would do a system restart, but I have yet to back-up a lot of files I would like to.

Maybe it was in fact a dying hard drive (no software could've prevented that). If that's the case avoid using the hard drive as much as possible to avoid further data loss.
Having it on is bad (remove the power cord whenever you're not going to actively use it (do not plug or unplug it while the computer is on!).
Trying to (unsuccessfully) boot from it or otherwise read from it is even worse.
Avoid writing on it at all costs.

Get some boot CD with a hard disk check program on it to confirm whether it's a hardware of software problem. If you don't have a preference there's several Linux Live CDs out there that you can use. Can't recommend a specific one, so you might as well take the one linked below, provided it as a disk checker.

If it's just a broken Windows use a Linux live CD to backup your files. (Or any other backup software of your choice.) And then reinstall Windows.

If it's a broken HDD you will need a replacement anyways so buy a new one, put Windows on it and try to recover your files from the old drive under the new system.

Your advice is a bit inconsistent, Nude, first you say not to use the HD or write to it, then you say to run a HD disk checker program. These programs need to read, and probably write, to the HD in order to check it. Not really a good idea.

If you suspect the HD is going bad, the first thing to do is to unplug it etc and prepare yourself to back up all of the contents onto other HDs (make sure you've got enough capacity to hold it all). Then once you've reconnected the HD, copy as much stuff off as you can, in order of importance.

Only once you've backed up as much as possible should you use a HD diagnostic program, as it is liable to make the problem worse. No point doing that if it prevents you from being able to recover any files off the drive.

0. Download Hiren's Boot CD (on non damaged OS, burn to CD)
1. Run a HDD smart testing tool to see disk health. Can do this in parted magic. If no errors, likely no problems continue below unless you want to be certain.
2. Grab a 2nd drive of equal or larger size than what's currently on the bad HDD
3. Attach both drives to a computer and boot into Parted Magic on HBCD
4a. Run Clonedisk and copy all of the files off the bad HDD
4b. In case Clonedisk fails, you can also run Roadkil's Unstoppable Copy in mini XP
5. With the data safely backed up, run gparted and attempt to repair what you can. Any repairs are signs of a faulty drive and should be tested vigorously or the drive should be abandoned.
6. In the event that no repairs can be made, run checkdisk in mini XP.

If you do not suspect a bad HDD, then run malwarebytes (also found on hiren's) along with combofix. Grab an XP cd and type in sfc /scannow to repair windows files. Run checkdisk by typing in chkdsk c /r.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 18 2012, 2:17 am by rockz.

rockz advice is probably going to be really good.

I was going to suggest try taking out the HD and plugging it into another desktop. It's pretty easy to do. Maybe there's a local hardware shop near you that could take your HD and try to get the files off for you.

There's also some USB adapters you could purchase that could connect to the SATA port in your HD and then plug into a USB drive elsewhere. I use a laptop HD in a little case that has a USB 3.0 adapter as a really big "flashdrive". You could get your files off of it like that perhaps.

Just sayin', here in Quebec I have received 4 fake automated calls saying something along the lines of "This is an important message, please do not hung up. Your computer has been infected [...]" and that's usually when I hang up. ;o
I like those messages talking about banking stuff as well. Nope! My bank account is doing very well, thank you very much.

I was able to snag my files via the use of Parted Magic. I did not run any system checks however.
My computer was able to restore back to Windows XP with service pack 1.

Nothing nasty in the EventViewer yet. I am quite ignorant about this whole ordeal.

Yeah I quickly wrote it up before work. What I meant was avoid accessing the hard disk wherever possible, but of course you have to access it to diagnose the problem.
Rockz' suggestion of first checking the S.M.A.R.T. data and then cloning it (if damaged) is probably the best course of action as S.M.A.R.T. data can be read with minimal hdd usage.