Stupid computer, grr!

Right, I'm not sure if anyone will ahve had this problem before or know of how to fix it, but I don't fancy a compleet reformat so here goes.

Today, when trying to open a program from the start menu in windows XP pro, it came up with a missing link mesage box. When I tried to manualy search for the program in the program files folder, I got to the folder the program is stored in and tried to open it. At this point, windows sat for a few seconds before retuning the message "The disk in drive c: is not formated. Would you like to format it now?". Obviousley I clicked no, and tried to get into the file though explorer but cam up against the same message.

Now I know the disk must be formated (at least for the most part), as I am running windows and quite a few other program right from it now. So I am very confused as to how only a part of the drive is unformated, especialy seen as how it was working earlier on today. I also tried doing a scandisk to see if that would pick it up and fix it, but that bombed out halfway through saying it couldn't compleet the task.

So does anyone know anyway I might be able to solve this problem, or am I going to have to reformat the whole thing and spend a day or so reinstalling everything onto the fresh partition?

Help!

:confused:

That Does not Compute

Windows will not give you that message when you are running from IT

what you got is a VIRUS - TROJAN

get a good Antivirus with UPDATED viruses definition, and scan the whole thing

:t

Just updated McAafe and ran a full scan of my comp and it is a clean as a whistle, so I guess it isn't a virus causing my problem. Any other ideas out there, or do I have a fun weekend ahead?

You still have a virus even if you will not admit it.

Have you ever tried The Cleaner? They offer a 30 day free trial.

http://www.moosoft.com

Here's two free online scans. Give them a try if you like. Good Luck! :)
http://www.pandasoftware.com/

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

As a betting man I have to go with a virus. However, the alternative is serious disk corruption. If Scandisk is working at all I am assuming you are using FAT32 rather than NTFS. Scandisk often seems to have a major problem if System Restore is turned on. (But if you turn it off you lose all previous restore points.) Restore MIGHT just help you out if it's a virus. To run Scandisk boot with A DOS disk, not from inside Windows. If it still chokes, and if you do not find a virus, only fresh format and install is safe.

I had this problem a while ago. Not only did it say that I needed to reformat c:/ but after a few days, my C:/ drive completely dissappeared from "my computer". I went into the bios and re-detected the ide configuration and it was messed up too. I shorted the cmos jumper and cleared it and then went into setup and re-configured the default settings. After that, it booted up and everthing was back to normal. Hope that works for you as well! Canyon411

Hi, I just tried the cleaner, no trojans were found, and as for teh file system, well that is NTFS on this partition. Also, the drive in question is a single unit connected up to my raid controler (ran out of space on the main M/B connectors) so it can't be the BIOS. And there is also no way I can run scandisk from dos mode as I have no floppy drive in my system (didn't think I would ever use one again after I got my CDRW) but the windows xp copy still will not run.

Quote:

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Originally posted by bigparsnip
the windows xp copy still will not run.

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Explain this please. What do you mean by "copy"?

The copy of scandisk in windows XP (I have olde ones on boot disks from old versions of windows), notthing naughty here :) .

Try repairing XP:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

i'm not to sure that will help to be honest, I think now, I will just put my nice fast new CD-RW to the test, back up my hard disk and start again. It will probably take a while, but it will make me feel a lot more secure in continuing to use the drive.