My computer is screwed.

theotherguy

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Well, this is the worst my computer has ever behaved. I'm not quite sure what to do, but maybe somone out there knows what's going on.

Whenever I start up, I get a black screen with just my mouse for five minutes, I can't ctrl+alt+delete, and it just sits there. But after the five minutes are up, I am able to log in. After I log in, my desktop image appears on the screen with nothing else. No windows explorer, no icons, nothing but a desktop image and a mouse. It sits like this for maybe 10 minutes with the same story as it was before I logged in, except this time I can control+alt+delete. All the while that this is happening, my hard drive is making weird noises (four consecutive revs...like a very loud annoying "HUMM HUMM HUMM HUMM" over and over again), usually, I am able to start up explorer after repeatedly kiling the explorer process and running it again.

After explorer is finally running, I tried a few things:
Full virus scan
Full spyware scan
Disk error check (main hard drive)
Disk defragment (main hard drive)
System restore.

Both the virus scan and the spyware scan revealed nothing...and the disk error check was not able to complete itself. (it gave me a generic "could not complete the disk check" error.) I was not able to defragment my disk either, and it gave me a blue screen of death that said a vital process shut itself down. And, finally, when I attempt a system restore, the system simply hangs and the hard drive makes the weird humming noise again, and it does absolutley nothing.

So, as you can see, I'm a bit worried. I can't do a disk check, a system restore or a disk defragment.

Oh, and also, my soundcard suddenly stopped working. It simply isn't being detected by window's sound settings. I reinstalled the drivers and ran a diagnostic, but everything I do tells me that my souncard is "functioning normally", yet windows doesn't even recognize the card.

Im not sure what could be causing all these errors, and I'm considering doing a full reformat and reinstall of anything. But before I run off and do that, I was wondering if any of you guys had any tips. Thank you.
 
I have no clue thats alot to handle at once . If you dont have any major information or anything like that on your pc i would just reformat i reformat about 3-4 times a year but then agian my pc is strickly for gaming so i could just reformat with no worries :) Sounds like somthings got a hold of you computer and is messing things up, maybe its a trojan hoarse virus i dont know much about that stuff.
 
Backup your stuff and try a different harddrive.
 
Yeah, I think formatting may not help you here. Get your vital data off that drive now. What is the drive btw? Age, make, model? Any chance it's under warranty? ;)
 
Well, first i'd say, what AV program are you using? If it's Norton, uninstall it and your boot should be back up.

I had a very similiar issue when I had Norton installed, accept instead of a black background, it was my desktop background. I switched to AVG after suspecting Norton of being the issue for the past month, and it's gone away!

EDIT: Didn't realise that you BSOD'ed when trying to defragment! Do what I do when I get a problem like this, a low level format and a complete reinstall of windows.
 
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