SONY Vaio Won't Read Hard Drive

Roxy Denman

Roxy Denman

Geek Trainee
My husband has a SONY Vaio VGC-RA840G (desktop) that has a Pentium D processor 820 (2.80 Ghz) with a 250GB hard drive, Win XP Pro, with a 8500GT Nvidia video card with dual screen output, and 2GB of Corsair Dominator XMS 2 Series RAM(HIGH PERF. @ 800 Mhz) with a Delta Electronics Inc power supply model number DPS-400LB A 364.7 W max output. The problem is that virus got on the HD and prevents it from booting up and when it does boot up it reads the C drive as a removable drive. We think it got into the win32 file, but we are unsure.

What is the best measure of action to take to get the computer from being a paperweight to being a functional computer again? Also is there any way possible to recover any of the files on the HD?

(The scenario is that former roommate was using hokey search engines and when we left for a trip we turned off the computer, and when we came home this is what we came back to when booting it up.)
 
Hi,

If you have not tried yet, see if you can boot into safe mode. When the computer is first coming up, keep tapping the f8 key and it should bring up a few different boot options. Try booting to safe mode or safe mode with networking.

A lot of times by going into safemode the malware or virus will not start when windows does because going into safe mode only loads minimal drivers and services. If you are able to boot into safe mode and sign in, try running your antivirus software to clean the infection.

I would also try running a malware scan as well, such as with spybot search and destroy or malwarebytes. If you need to download them, you should be able to get to the internet if you boot to safemode with networking. If you cannot get into safemode, some antivirus software (such as Norton ) have a bootable CD that you can boot to and then it will try scanning the computer to clean the infections.

A last resort would be to reformat the hard drive and reinstall the operating system... but you would lose all your data on the drive when you do this. Another option that you can try, though it is risky, is to slave the infected hard drive to a working computer.

You should then be able to use that computer's antivirus software to clean the drive or at least get any important data off of the bad drive. It is risky though because the infection could spread from the bad drive to the clean one, so this would be a last resort kind of thing. If you need antivirus software, some good free ones are AVG and Avast! .
 
It will not let me reformat at all, and it will not boot into safe mode. I am trying one other option to remove the cmos battery in hopes that it will reset to allow a reformat.
 
Doing a repair should keep your data and programs intact. If this doesnt work you may need to try a full reinstallation. Also, the windows cd should allow you to do a reformat of the drive if you decide to wipe out the drive. When you reformat, you will lose all data and programs on the hard drive though.
 
When I start up the computer, I get the black screen that says that it cannot read removable drive and cannot find C drive.
 
On startup; press F2 during the Sony Vaio logo, this should take you into the BIOS, from here try and locate an option that will allow you to change the boot device from "HDD" to "CD-ROM" or something similar.
 
When the machine first turns on, keep tapping either the delete key or the F2 key to try to get into the BIOS. Its different for different motherboard manufacturers which key it is, but is usually one of those 2. The message you are getting above means that the BIOS finished its test and tried to pass control of the system to an operating system but there was a problem with it, so we need to try to get into the BIOS to change the boot order of devices so that it will look to the internal CD-Rom for an operating system (windows install cd) first, and then the hard drive afterwards.
 
In order for me to be able to assist you I'll need some more info

(1) When your computer freezes, are you able to toggle the caps lock or the num lock?
(2) Do you get the loading windows prompt at all after BIOS finishes its bit?
(3) Are you able to access the boot menu by pressing F8 key? (Just after BIOS screen)
(4) Did you recently add any new hardware devices?

Once I have these details I'll be able to comment further ;)
 
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