Blue Screen of Death Syndrome

[Elemental]

Something weird happened: I was deletingng unwanted documents & one of them was a copy of an online receipt from a sales company that was recently hacked with 2.4 million customers details at risk. Another part of their company which does telecommunications has also had people receiving fake calls.I had one here but hung up after they enquired about my broadband So anyways, I deleted the receipt & emptied the main recycle bin. Laptop was low battery so I put it on sleep. Got lead & turned back on & it said incorrect shutdown. I tried "normal windows reboot" Message came up about checking disc & verifications & 4 lots of several thousand files were listed, then it started deleting the stuff listed. I tried rebooting in "safe mode" "safe mode with command" etc but with each, once I put in the windows password it was just blue screen of death with a little rotating circle icon. Next day I remembered about the Recovery disc & managed to run that through & re-install basic Windows 7 but all files, pics, additional browsers, antivirus etc has all been wiped as has anything originally put on the system by Samsung. Could a virus have been attached to that receipt which would infiltrate a system or could something essential to the OS have been deleted into recycle & lost which would affect drvers & system files? Apologies if this is a silly question I'm no technoid head, sadly Thanks for any ideas here.

 

[wyverary]

Did it return any specific error messages? It might not be a virus at all, simply faulty hardware, and the contents of the error message (it usually looks like a string of nonsense) will tell you exactly what went wrong. If that's not the case, there are ways to clean a computer beyond running a normal virus scan.

(I'm a CIT student, but I started in networking and won't be taking the hardware certifications for quite a while, so I don't know if I can be much help, heh.)

EDIT: I missed a whole bunch of stuff in your post! Yes, it could likely have been a virus...most likely a rootkit, which are very hard to detect and get rid of without special boot-up software. Unfortunately your files are probably lost, since you did a clean install, so unless you have a regular backup, or if you are willing to shell out quite a lot of money to see if they can be recovered.

 

[s3_gunzel]

Laptop was low battery so I put it on sleep. Got lead & turned back on & it said incorrect shutdown.

Normal. Laptops with graphics cards can crash on sleeping. The graphics cards aren't really built to sleep.

I tried "normal windows reboot" Message came up about checking disc & verifications & 4 lots of several thousand files were listed, then it started deleting the stuff listed.

Normal, and safe.

I tried rebooting in "safe mode" "safe mode with command" etc but with each, once I put in the windows password it was just blue screen of death with a little rotating circle icon.

Unless you can provide an error code, I can't really help you.

Next day I remembered about the Recovery disc & managed to run that through & re-install basic Windows 7 but all files, pics, additional browsers, antivirus etc has all been wiped as has anything originally put on the system by Samsung.

Uh, yes, that's what a recovery disk does - recovers the Windows OS to the point it was when you purchased it (perhaps without the bloatware).

 

[Elemental]

I filmed a segment just before the screen crashed but you have to be signed into YouTube to view this link it's saying now.

I don't know now, that I clicked the best reinstallation option using the disc; I certainly never backed anything up. The recovery disc had to be run a few times before it was recognised..

EDIT: I AM signed in & it still won't play so Meh idk.

 

[dragonwolf]

BSOD is nearly always caused by faulty hardware. There's not really enough information here to say for sure, but given that you had issues running the recovery disk suggests that your problem is hardware-related.

The fact that you noticed the failure when deleting files is very likely coincidental (I actually had the same thing happen when my hard drive kicked the bucket -- I happened to be deleting some files off a different hard drive when everything locked up, when I restarted the drive was no longer recognized even at the pre-operating system level).

While it's technically possible that a virus could have been attached to the receipt and triggered when you deleted it, that's not usually how either file-based viruses/worms attack, nor is that usually the purpose of cracking a large company.

File-based malware typically runs when the infected file is opened or accessed in any way, so if you ever opened that file and it was infected, then odds are your computer was already infected before this incident. Some particularly nasty ones will run as soon as the file's copied to your hard drive. Additionally, they usually try to prevent themselves from being deleted and will block deletion efforts more often than be triggered by deletion.

However, when crackers attack a large company, such as a retailer, bank, or credit card company, they are not usually looking to plant anything into the system. They're looking to extract the contents of the database these companies keep. These databases are treasure troves of personal information, including phone numbers, emails, and in some cases, social security or credit card numbers. This kind of information is worth a fortune and far more worth the risk of breaking into a company's system than planting malware in most cases.

And yes, running the recovery disk to "reinstall basic Windows 7" will wipe the drive and remove any files you had on it. This is why it's a very, very good idea to back up anything you have to, at the very least, a secondary hard drive, and better yet, an external location. Dropbox or similar software is a good, easy way to do this.

 

[Beverly]

Well, seeing a DxDiag Report might help us see what might need updating, and what might be old enough to be a likely component to be failing. BSOD is almost always hardware. That might be as major as the motherboard or, as minor as a fan or needing new thermal paste.

1. Hold down the Windows key on your keyboard and press the letter R.
2. In the Run dialog that appears type "dxdiag" without the quotes in the text box and press Enter.
3. If you get a request asking to check if your drivers are digitally signed choose "Yes."
4. In the DirectX Diagnostic Tool that appears, in the bottom-right click "Save All Information..."
5. On your Desktop, save as "DxDiag.txt"
6. Double click DxDiag.txt on your Desktop to open it, press Control-A to select all.
7. Attach that file, or upload it to a file hosting site and link the download for us.

Dxdiag reports are quite long so, don't copy and paste it here, just put the file someplace we can download it and have a look at it.

I run three external hard drives as backup drives (redundancy in case one of those fails) as well as a remote backup service. I've had motherboards, hard drives, graphics cards, RAM and the power supply fail on various computers over the years. Always keep backup copies of at least your passwords, documents and, photos. Most of the rest you can get back by reinstalling or, downloading the content again.

 

[Elemental]

Update: Thanks to the irl intervention on reading my distress post, by 'Bro Freak who is awesomely tech-savvy, the issue was diagnosed as being likely due to an incomplete reinstallation of missing drivers. These were located online & downloaded, so the system is running complete again, with the bonus of losing unwanted Samsung progs. He also did a massive clean-up 'op so the machine was gleaming. Most of the lost pics are otherwise accessible & I dont store passwords Thanks for the responses here.

 

[Beverly]

I'm glad you got it working again. I just had to replace the motherboard in my rig, but it was still under warranty, so had to send the rig in to have that done. it pays to spend more up front, I've got three years on my mobo and, 2 on the rest of the rig. (it's a custom.)