?? does anyone know where & how xp stores its routing table??

TIA

Just for your info, in case someone else has received the same email...

Received unsolicited email from 03hillaj@reeds.surrey.sch.uk at 4:33pm.
The attached file colby598.com has virus W32.HLLW.Fizzer@mm.
Email removed.

Does anyone know how to track down the user?

mbbcat,

not in my basic book on XP

try

www.winguides.com
communities.msn.com/windowsxpforrealpeople
www.windows-help.net/windowsxp

axdpc,

re contacting that user about that email. I dont suppose youve tried emailing them? :)

J.

axdpc, the user probably does not know he's infected...

My pc freezes on average twice a day(mouse freezes normally)sometimes more ,especialy when i run a certain programme called hotcomlite but another 40odd people who use the same programme do not have a problem.

This freezing problem still happens even when i am not running this programme,my computer expert has given up on it.

what can you do, i have had this problem for months but it has got better since i changed from xp to 2000.(i have a dual processor)

I am considering taking it in to PC world where i understand they keep it for a good few days which is a complete pain but i have got to do something.

Do you think their is any point in taking it in their,would one pc boffin do anything different from my usual guy who seems to be an expert.

very frustrating

any advice

Mayday Mayday Mayday

My second m/c has just said "unable to write to drive c:". When I rebooted it gets to a message saying "unable to locate operating system" and goes no further. The c drive obviously didn't boot up so I'm guessing I'm fooked!! Would a computer repair shop be able to copy the disk onto a new one or is it totally irretrievable? Would it do this if it overheated? Anyone got any pointers as to my next move, pleeeeeease.

Looks like I am about to get taught the lesson about keeping back ups up to date :-(

Robb, you got a disk error, which will happen to everyone at some time, which is why it's important to take back ups :-) Seriously, disk errors are not too bad if they occur in areas of the disk used by applications or data, but if they occur in areas used by Windows then they can leave you without a bootable system. The procedure is to (a) run Scandisk with the thorough option to write and readback from every sector on the disk to check for bad sectors, which are then removed from use, (b) fix the operating system, by reinstalling if you don't have a backup, (c) if you reinstall the operating system you will need to reinstall all your applications and (d) based on how many bad sectors have been found and how long you've had the drive you may decide it is safer to replace the drive rather than run the risk of more errors.

What version of Windows do you have? The procedure will be somewhat simpler if you created a repair disk at some stage in the past.

Kayak - thanks for the reply.

I'm running that m/c on 98se. This may be a dummo question but how do I run scandisk if on initial start up it only gets to "unable to locate operating system" and goes no further. If I touch a key it just repeats the message.

I have floppies marked Windows 98 Start Up Disk No.1 and 2 and also a bunch that looks like they were created with Norton labelled Rescue Disk No.'s 1-6. No.1 is Basic Rescue Boot Floppy Disk and the other 5 are to do with NAV Program and Definitions.

Robb: do you get a dos prompt e.g. C:> or just that message? If you don't get a DOS prompt then it's more likely that the boot sector on the disk is dead. That would tend to indicate that you may have been infected with a virus.

Kayak

I just get the message "Operating System not found" (to be precise) with no dos prompt. I can hear that the c drive does not boot up properly. I use NAV and keep it up to date with the auto facility. The m/c is subordinate to my main machine on my home network and does not have email. If it was a virus that would mean I should use the basic Rescue Boot Floppy Disk, right?

Put one of the Norton floppies in the drive and boot from it. You ought to get a DOS prompt and be able to see the files on the C: drive by typing DIR C: etc. in DOS. If you get the DOS prompt but can't see C: then your whole disk is dead. If you see C: then the next step is to run SCANDISK C:/SURFACE at the DOS prompt to run a full disk check. This depends on SCANDISK being on one of the floppies you have. Then you would write a new boot sector to the drive. The command for this is SYS C: at the DOS prompt, and again it depends on a file SYS.COM being present on one of the floppies you have.

I'm not familiar with Norton and it's probable that there are facilities on their rescue disks to deal with such situations, e.g. writing a new boot sector, scanning for bad sectors, and recovering data.

Kayak, thanks for the education, Im going to copy your posts into a txt file for the day when it happens to me. One question, would a windows boot disc help in the same situation (in a similar way to the Norton floppies)

Neil

Kayak - Thanks for your prompt replies. They are much appreciated.

No c drive was available. Following all the instructions on the rescue disk eventually led me to "Unable to access drive C:"

I assume from this that the C drive is no more, that it is an ex C drive, that it is bereft of life and only gave the impression of life because it is nailed to its computer case in the upright position .......

I am going to clock off and give myself a severe self criticism for putting myself in this position. Can it still be accessed in some way by a clever computer repair expert? Tomorrow I will do things like check internally that it is still plugged in etc.

Again, thanks for your help

Regards
Rob

Robb, little consolation at the moment but the best thing I ever did was install a 250m zip drive in one pc and spend a bit of time finding and configuring an application to copy all my data, favorites, emails, address and so on from the pcs on my network onto the zip disc. To backup everything I just have to click on a shortcut on my desktop, I do it every night and swap discs once a week.

good luck with your recovery.


Neil

robber - thanks for the tip. I will come back to that for the future - once I've double killed this hard disk in a really painful way - and then calmed down :-)

Robb, sorry to hear that. Assuming you have powered your PC off at some stage during all of that and the drive is not visible on power on, then you have a candidate for a future MP sketch. If the information on the drive is really critical there are data recovery specialists you can search for on the web, but that would not be cheap. As you say, it's worth checking that the data and power cables to the drive (and the other ends) are secure. I don't think that a computer repair shop would be able to do anything, but I guess that's also worth a try.

robber, if you have Windows 2000 or XP then there is a facility to create repair disks built in, and anti virus programs etc. also normally have them. Otherwise the boot disks won't be much use. What you can do is to format a floppy (make it bootable), and copy SCANDISK, SYS, FORMAT, and FDISK onto it from your \WINDOWS\COMMAND folder. That should give you most of the facilities.

Robb, it just occurred to me that there is something else worth checking, namely that the BIOS parameters for the drive are correct (things like cylinders, no. of tracks/sectors etc.) Go into the BIOS at boot. Unless you have documentation for the drive you won't know what they should be (although you will find a manual for it on the manufacturer's site on the web given the model number). However, there is normally an auto-detect option which gets the BIOS to find out the correct parameters.

Neil,

What application did you find that would copy your necessaries over? If you use Iomega's software it is severely limited in what you can do and I've been hoping to find a better alternative.

Thanks, Rob.

Robb - Pull it out and place it in a plastic bag and then into the freezer for three minutes or so than back into the machine and see what happens.
No, I'm not 'pulling your plonker' - twice I've used this trick and managed to get the data off of a failed unit. True, many times it hasn't worked but in desperate times!!!
The other track I'd take is, if that doesn't work, put it in your other machine as a second disk (in place of the CD probably) and on its own IDE ribbon cable to IDE2. The other machine may pick it up as a D: drive if your lucky and you can then transfer your data onto its drive.


Mr. Wonderfull - The fact that you've a dual processor stopped me answering. That opens up a whole can of worms with the programmes that try to use it. Normally though you should check that your RAM's OK (by substitution), that the video drivers etc are the latest and that it's not something like Kaza running in the background that's freezing it. You may also get a clue if you look in event viewer which may have entries coinciding with failure.
I'd be interested to hear of your experience if you do take it to PC world BTW.