Okay…I’m computer illiterate…I installed free Avast a while ago on my old XP desktop and it was working good A few days ago I noticed an Avast option to “speed up my system” or something. Clicked it and went while I forgot about it for a few days. Today the computer was running with my usual desktop screen but there was a notice that Avast had to restart my computer. Of course I clicked OK.
It went through the boot sequence but never made it past the windows loading bar screen when there was a sudden flash of blue screen and it started to reboot. Same thing again, and again…a screen giving me options (safe-mode, safe-mode with networking etc) came up but none of those worked either. I guess maybe after 15 years of continuous good service it looks like that old desktop is toast.
So I’ve tried a few things… you know…reset the defaults in setup and play with the boot options and stuff. But I noticed I can’t see my hard drives in set-up anymore (I’m sure they used to be primary first and second) …strange.
Maybe because I don’t understand computers…or maybe it’s time to retire that antique. Any advice?
Are the drives still recognized by the bios correctly ?
If not, remove the cables from them, clean the contacts and attach them again.
Check if the bios is recognizing them now.
No the drives don’t show up in bios (no primary or secondary drive detected) and I’ll try your idea although it was running and appeared normal until it rebooted so I’m not sure that will help. This is no big deal Eddy, it’s my shop computer (old and slow) that I use for 32bit CAD so it’s overdue to be turfed anyway. I just thought there might be a simple solution. If it won’t go I’ll see if I can find another one, read the drives and save any data.
I did all the usual stuff, reconnecting, wiggling, changed the ribbon connector, but bios says “primary ide and secondary ide not detected”. I also removed the bios battery for a while and let it start fresh. It’s strange that both disk drives are gone and yet the drives spin, and it will post as far as the blue windows loading bar and then a quick blue screen which goes by so fast I can’t read it…
I’ll try to boot with my XP disc and see what happens but it doesn’t look promising. I’ll try to slave the drives to another computer to recover my data but that’s not promising either, and at the moment I just have this little laptop…Initially the computer was running normally and there was no problem until I clicked on the “Avast needs to reboot” sign, so I’m naturally supicious that those changes caused the problem.
Really strange that both drives are not detected and you still see the Windows loading screen.
That is basically technical not possible.
Since they are IDE drives, have you tried them on the secondary IDE connector ? (one at a time ofcourse)
Have you change the jumper(s) to set them as primary drive(s) ?
And about removing the battery, on some motherboards you also need to change a jumper setting to reset the bios.
So you’re using an 15 year old PC with IDE-HDD’s ?
Maybe after those 15 years your BIOS battery is empty, or did you replace it in this time with a new one ?
So here are my suggestions:
Replace your BIOS battery with a new one
Check if your IDE-Controllers are enabled in the BIOS
Check if the jumpers on your HDD’s are in the right Position
It’s “MASTER” for the Drive you used to boot from and “SLAVE” for the second on if the are connected to the same IDE-Port.
Check (again) if all the Cables are in the right Position
Did you have a DVD-ROM installed in your Computer ?
Is this drive shown in the BIOS and is it working properly ?
If you “slave” the drive to another Computer try to set the Jumper on the Drive to “Slave”
Try to get an “IDE to USB Adapter” like this http://www.usbgear.com/Y103SS.html
and connect your HDD to another Computer.
Leave the jumper on the drive in the “Master” position and see if this works
If you have access to your drive you can at last save your data.
By the way, I’m not a native english speaker, so maybe me englisch seems a litte bit odd
After juggling the boot sequence again, bios reported both drives but still wouldn’t go past the windows boot screen without rebooting again. I booted from my XP disc and ran the recovery consol and it showed both drives so I attempted to see the directory on C and it reported “file enumeration was not valid” and I could see no directories or files. My second hard drive read okay.
I ran fixboot with no success but I didn’t run fixmbr yet…I’ll try that but my guess now is it’s just an other HD failure, perhaps just coincidental with the initial reboot. Still maybe the an mbr rewrite will allow me to view the files.
Yes, it’s an old computer, but the bios battery has been changed many times…The pc is kept around to run my dos routines, maintain my website and it will even run basic which I still use regularly on other small devices (dating myself again), but it’s not essential and I can easily replace it.
I think it’s maybe just another random hard drive failure…
I just thought I’d update this issue. After doing all the usual checking connections, playing with boot sequences and changing cables around I never got past the problem of the blue-screen and ongoing reboots that start in the last loading sequence of win xp home. It’s an old computer, but it’s the last 32 bit machine I have for all my old programs so I was casting about for another old 32 bit machine in the hopes I could at least still read the data from my c drive. I didn’t have much confidence because running recovery consol from my XP cd, C drive showed only the notice that the drive “file enumeration failed” and there was no directory for C.
Yesterday I ran the recovery consol again (last try before the recycle bin) and ran fxdsk and after a few tries and a long wait it finally gave me a report and the drive showed the directory and after that the computer booted normally. I rebooted a few times to assure myself it was gonna run and it looked fine.
The problem is, after running a few hours a pop-up once again appeared saying “Avast needed to restart”. I’m probably wrong, but I’m convinced that the original changes to the drive were caused by the avast “improve performance” routine that was still active and again wanting to apply changes to the drive. Being paranoid I didn’t click the pop-up and instead I removed avast completely with task-manager and reverted to my original AV. The computer has been running normally for the last 24 hours…
As you might guess, I don’t have a clue what the problem was.
Just my 2 cents worth, I think this product is risky when used by computer novices,
not enough experience to evaluate the things avast wants to do - and when it screws up
it screws up good.
I would not run it at all unless you have some insurance; ie. a recent, complete, partition backup
that you’re prepared to use for a restore if necessary.
