Oh, Mighty Virus Gurus…Please help a mere mortal such as I !!


Perhaps someone knows the answer to this problem right off the bat. But if not, I’ve written a lengthy post so as to provide as much info as possible about the problem I have. So, sorry if this post is long-winded….



“CANNOT WRITE TO DISK IN DRIVE C, DATA OR FILES MAY BE LOST”


This is the error message I am receiving on a regular basis during any computer session, regardless of whether I am online or not. I’ve had this message even when trying to access a simple game of solitaire!

The error message occurs after much “grinding” coming from the disk as it tries to retrieve data or perform any command. When the grinding occurs, the system is completely frozen at that time, often remaining frozen for several minutes. And user control only returns when the ‘blue screen of death’ appears with the above message.

If I “Press any key to continue”, as the blue screen instructs, sometimes I regain control of the machine and can continue; sometimes the system just crashes and begins an immediate automatic reboot.

Upon reboot, the system will tell me it needs to perform SCANDISK and goes ahead with it, but it also insists on doing a SURFACE SCAN as well (due to the disk error it assumes it has). However, whenever it does the surface scan, it comes up with NO BAD CLUSTERS FOUND.

WINDOWS will load up and everything appears fine. But within minutes, the system will revert to “grinding” again and the same blue screen error message “CANNOT WRITE TO DISK…”.

THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TRIED SO FAR:

I am convinced this is a virus because I have already eliminated the hardware aspect:

The drive has been removed from the machine and has been rigorously tested with it’s own diagnostics and reports that there is nothing wrong with the drive. The diagnostic report itself informs me that this type of “grinding” can occur, not due to the disk itself, but due to a defective cable or a virus.

The cable connecting the drive was replaced with a new one (for the sake of eliminating this as the culprit) and yet the system still grinds away and gives the same error message.

I have run a search through Google using the error message as the search item and found some web entries online from other people complaining about this same error with the same symptoms as mine. But none of the articles I read offered any solution. I also ran a search on this site using the error message as the search item but found no message thread that matched this one.

WHAT I AM SUSPECTING:

It seems to me that this must be a virus/trojan/worm, not a hardware problem. And it seems to be somehow linked to the SCANDISK program itself. It is as though the system is being forced to run scandisk as a way to kick off the virus itself. I say this because recently, when the system boots, I have decided to exit from the SURFACE SCAN before it completes (since it takes ages and doesn’t seem to do any good anyway), and I have noticed that by exiting from the SURFACE SCAN program prematurely, when the system comes up, I may still have “grinding” but I DON’T have the blue screen of death/error message.

However, with or without the blue screen of death, the constant grinding is making it impossible to get anything done at all and I know it’s not healthy for the disk to be suffering from this grinding all the time.

I am truly baffled at this point and desperately hope that somebody has heard of this problem and may know how to fix it. I don’t know the name of the virus because I am also unable to run an accurate virus scan – I tried to run an internet update on my anti-virus program, but that fails for unknown reasons. So, if this is a fairly new virus, the anti-virus software version I have on my PC wouldn’t know about it and I cannot get the update downloaded from the net - perhaps the virus itself is preventing this download???

I am running Windows 98SE, have a 10GB Seagate hard drive with 32 Meg. memory. (It’s an older machine but extremely reliable – until now !) I have been using AVG Anti Virus software which has served me well in the past.

If nobody knows the remedy to this, perhaps someone might recommend a website that offers a free virus scan so I can at least try to determine if a virus is present and what the name of the virus is.

One more note: On one of the SURFACE SCANS, the system DID report that it found a bad cluster on Drive C and then proceeded to map it out. Yet it had no bearing on the performance of the machine; the grinding and error messages continued. And interestingly enough, I have heard of viruses that sometimes create a “fake” bad cluster on disk that the virus itself then occupies and uses as its resident location. Is this true? Could such a scenario be happening to me?

I sincerely appreciate any advice from the virus “gurus” who frequent this site!

Thanx in advance,

Dazednconfused…’n very frustrated.