Yet another plea for computer help...

[AvsGirl41]

It's uncertain whether my computer is having software problems, hardware problems, or some fun combination of the two.

I removed a MASSIVE amount of spyware (and this with Ad-Aware running) and a trojan horse over Labor Day weekend. It was causing the screen to flash uncontrollably, making rebooting extremely difficult. After cleaning out the garbage, and running some scans and repairs, the problem seemed to be cleared up.

Until this week. My CD-ROM drive is not ejecting disks, you usually have to go and right click on the D: drive to open it. It is reading disks that aren't currently loaded, implying that it's transferred the data. I often find folders from my CD on the C: drive, sometimes they're empty, sometimes they're not. Yet they're still on the disk....or are they? 2 nights ago, it ate a text file I'd been working on from a CD-RW.

I'm scheduling my computer for repair with someone far more skilled than me (I think it needs to be wiped again, but since the CD-Rom isn't working well, I'm concerned it might not be able to do the System Restore.). But here are my concerns that I hope someone can answer:

Is my CD-RW disk corrupted? There's 3 years worth of papers and notes and I am myself at the idea of them being lost. I've opened a few, and they seem to be ok, but what's the possibility that they've been corrupted merely by accessing them? I haven't edited any of them since it ate the one I'd been working on. If they're appearing on C and D, what does that mean for the originals on the disk?

Please help me.

 

[GibsonGirl]

Spyware can certainly do some strange things to one's computer...my sister's actually completely shut down as a result of having over 200 data miner files on it.

As for the CD-ROM, perhaps there is some hardware that accidentally got deleted when you were cleaning up the computer? I don't profess to be an expert on CD-ROMS, but something similar happened to me with regards to my audio driver. What you should do, is go into the "Add Hardware" wizard under your computer's control panel (I'm assuming you're on windows?). Just run the wizard, and it should pick up any hardware problems and repair them automatically. If nothing comes up, then you're probably going to have to take it in to a technician.

Then again, it could just be the disk, though I've never really heard of any CD-RW disks becoming corrupted. HEh, maybe someone else here can be of more help.

 

[jesseu2]

get a router, it blocks these things. my computers have been trojan an spyware free for 2 yrs. don't open any emails you don't know and do not click Yes or Ok on prompts to install crap from websites you don't know are safe.

 

[U2Kitten]

I hope you don't have to do a system restore because you will lose all your data

 

[Liesje]

I hope you don't have to do a system restore because you will lose all your data

Sometimes you can do a non-destructive restore.

 

[bayernfc]

I had the same problem when i downloaded the windows xp sp2 package as an update, lots of spyware and most program wouldn't function!!

 

[neutral]

Windows SP2 doesn't come with spyware.

AvsGirl41, 3 year old CD-RWs can go bad, I'm not sure if the spyware could write to the disc though. Um is there another computer you could try to read that disc on, at school/work maybe?

 

[AvsGirl41]

Thanks, everyone!

The CD-RW actually isn't 3 years old, just the stuff on it. I just put everything from school onto CD, after the disks were eaten. Hmmm, most of the papers are duplicated on floppy, come to think of it. That's good to know.

I actually tried opening it at school, but neither my work computer or the lab computer will read a CD-RW, which was nice to know. You need Admin access.