[Ham-Computers] Win98...not convinced this is a virus

[Trevor Holyoak]

Anytime your computer is not "properly" shutdown (as is the case when it 
crashes and you have to reboot it), it will automatically run Scandisk 
to make sure nothing's wrong. If it was writing to the hard drive when 
it crashed or was rebooted, it could have corrupted something.

- Trevor

refmon wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Happy New Year, all.  I've been having a problem here that on the surface behaves like a virus, but the more I wrestle with it, I wonder if I don't have a plain old obscure tech problem.  Here's the tale o' woe:
> 
> This is a Radisys EMI-shielded server and is basically electrically bulletproof.  I'm running a Lanner single board computer board with 512MB memory and 750MHz PIII.  It's got the usual audio & video boards, an extra SIO board, a GPIB board, and SCSI Adaptec 3940 AUWD dual channel.  Disk is 18GB 10K RPM IBM OEM, CD is 40 x Plextor, and DVD is a Creative unit.
> 
> This thing has been rock solid...gets all the updates from Microsoft, Norton, etc.  Also runs Trojan killers, spybot killers, and I manually back up my registry files daily...both sys.dat and user.dat (that actually helps this problem a lot).
> 
> Here's the problem, which happens repeatedly, although not very often:  cruising along just fine and then it's like a truck hit the PC...a burst of seemingly meaningless disk activity and blue screen with one of a variety of "fatal error messages"...it is never possible to continue to an orderly shut down even though it says to try.
> 
> Finally, I shut down the PC for a hard reset...opening boot is fine, but as soon as the boot sequence gets to reaching for the C drive, I get a corrupted disk error and that scandisk must be run (even though I've replaced scan disk with Norton Disk Doctor.  So I say ok, and it tells me Scandisk can't be found, even though it's in the path that just got booted in.  I've discovered that if you push enter enough, the PC will eventually bypass this stage and continue loading windows...at this point, one of two things happens:
> 
> 1)  Windows "discovers" a problem with my registry and fixes it for me, then reboots...if that happens, you're in perma-loop...reeboot/fix/reboot/fix, etc etc.  A hard power down generally breaks that cycle.
> 
> 2)  Windows actually boots through sign on screen and runs, although some drivers may be corrupted.  Usually either the NIC driver is blown or one or more network services are gone.  They reinstall in the routine manner.  Of course, you must reboot...that's when the scandisk stuff comes up again.  I have completely diagnosed this disk with scandisk manually, Norton Disk Doctor, and taken the SCSI drive to another Radisys server here (after virus scan, trojan kill, etc) and diagnosed it both ways there...no problems at all...not even a bad sector...nothing.
> 
> I now have the PC running apparantly normally except for this scandisk BS, which, I have determined requires 38 pushes of the enter button...I got PO'd and bored.
> 
> Anyone have any ideas?  First, why won't scandisk step aside when I select "replace scandisk with Norton Disk Doctor" (done in Norton)?  2nd...where did the bit or byte get stuck that keeps insisting on running scandisk?  In that it insists on running scandisk, why can't it find it?
> 
> 
> any ideas or direct solutions greatly appreciated
> 
> best regards
> 
> John Collins
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