Vista won't boot, not even in safe mode or recovery

Hi,

I have a Sony Vaio  laptop which had become severely infected with adware/spyware viruses. After being being unsuccessful in removing all of the viruses I decided to reload vista.

After backing up the relevant data. I reset the laptop with the Vaio recovery disk in the disk drive. The recovery console failed to load. The green status bar just kept swiping across the screen.

Next I took the disk out and let windows load and opened the Vaio recovery tool. I clicked 'restore my pc back to factory settings' and the software began to initialize it then proceeded to shut down windows. As this was happening I was confronted with the blue screen and windows crashed.

The laptop reset itself and began to load the Vaio recovery tool (just as when using the recovery disk) and again after two hours of waiting the green status bar was still going back and forth.

I reset the computer and tried F8 and using safe mode. However safe mode fails in initialize and hangs with the last driver: disk.sys

I have tried all of these things repeatedly and tried with another Vista recovery disk (even though I know the other one works because I recovered this laptop not so long ago with it) with no luck

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Rohit
rohitgorasia1Asked:
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rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
Thanks for a quick reply.

It sounds like a good idea but when i use the XP disk i cant even see the drive!

DMTechGrooupCommented:
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rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
There is no option for this in the bios.

infact apart from the boot sequence there aren't many options at all.
DMTechGrooupCommented:
Not the best plan but maybe give Sony Tech Support call....
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
Thats to a bad idea. But there not open till Monday which means I'll be lucky to get it fixed by monday evening and back to normal operation sometime Tuesday.

There must be a work around.

It should be simple todo what I need to
DMTechGrooupCommented:
Do you know who the manuacture of the HDD is?  Are you able to remove it from the laptop?
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
The HDD is made by fujitsu. I dont really want to remove it.

What are you thinking?
DMTechGrooupCommented:
JohnBusiness Consultant (Owner)Commented:
This will be a long shot (you can tell by my username). On most IBM recovery CD's, you can boot to a text menu, break out of the first stable menu screen, and find yourself at a DOS prompt where you can find FDISK. Then run FDISK to delete partitions as per the second post here. It may be that the Vista disk will not do this.

For an even longer shot - might you have a friend or acquaintance who has squirreled away a Windows 98 CD. That will have FDISK on it as well. ... T
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
I have already download the dos exe file but how do i get to dos so that i can run it.
DMTechGrooupCommented:
It should create a boot disk or CD.. just run it
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
I left the vista boot disk loading overnight. When I came back in the morning it had loaded. I managed to reinstall vista and most of my software.

When I rebooted windows it failed to load. I waited 30mins and it still hadent loaded. I then tried to run Vista start up repair and that took over 3hrs to load.

Once I was finally into windows I ran FJDT_win.exe (the fujitsu HDD diagnostic) the quick scan said the HDD had errors and i should run the full scan when I did the full scan the only infomation was that it did not pass the extended test and the drive had failed. Is there any other way to get more infomation. The boot problem seems to happens randomly and if the HDD were buggered would it not happen all the time?

RG
DMTechGrooupCommented:
The HDD needs to be replaced.  If it is still under warranty then get Sony to do it otherwise pick one up from like newegg.com
DMTechGrooupCommented:
If you have data on there you need you can try something like spinrite to recover the drive to get the data off.  It is like 90 bucks and well worth it. http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
Is there any way I can get any more diagnotic info!
DMTechGrooupCommented:
The HDD scanner told you what the issue was.. I am not sure what more you are looking for?  It had bad sectors and the HDD is failing.
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
I just dont belive the HDD is buggered. The problem hasent come back since my last post. The HDD scanner failed to compleate a scan and after 12% just said there were errors.
DMTechGrooupCommented:
http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

If you want to know for certain you can purchase that and it don't lie.

Backup your data.. all the symptoms you have stated show a HDD error.. Best of luck.
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
I ran the Sony Vaio Hardware Diagnostic and the HDD Test

the result was as follows:

2008/11/28  11:37:43
VGN-FZ11Z

= HDD Test Start =
C:  => Selected

 Drive 0
 Linear Seek Test     OK
 Random Seek Test     OK
 Funnel Seek Test     OK
 Surface Scan Test    OK

= No error was detected. =

Could it be that the Vaio software is missing a specifc test that the Fujitsu diagnostic is using?

DMTechGrooupCommented:
Possibly, you should put more trust into the manufacture of the equipment.. in this case Fujitsu.
rohitgorasia1Author Commented:
Many Thanks,

I finally replace the HDD and it works fine (for now)

Rohit
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Windows Vista

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