Virus?

[Jallen]

Last night I was calmly typing an essay for homework when my other computer froze. I restared it and as words scrolled on my screen I saw that my computer could not detect the primary boot drive. I restared again and this time it did and showed the windows ME start up graphic but then it said that it could not locate the registry. I have a bad feeling that a virus caused this. Anyone have this happen to them? Anything else that could have caused this?

[-DaRK-RaiDeR-]

Jallen,

It could be a virus but it couldn't too. Just do an scan check with your antivirus (supposing you have one) or if Windows doesn't start, use another PC to check yours.

Good luck.

[HackersWarrioR]

It may be that a virus can cause this kind of problem but I think that if it were the case you could not have started again your PC? In general with this problem occurs following the failure of a dll file, Or quite simply of a bad loading of Windows. I highly advise you to use the diskette of emergency repairs!!!

[Bohogg]

I tend to go with HackersWarrioR.....I had similar troubles when I ran Win/ME and it was crossed dll files.......Format fixed it each time.....ME isnt very stable,I know that much.....

[phishphreek]

I too have had this happen, but mostly with Win98se.

When it says that it can't find the registry, you can goto a command prompt and type

c:\scanreg.exe /fix

this should bring you into a utility that will repair your registry for you.

Or, you can do

c:\scanreg.exe

that will give you options. You can just restore to an earlier date.

Another thing... when it just freezes and then when you reboot it tells you it can't find the primary partition... you may be looking at a failing hard drive. Just to be safe... I'd start backing up your data ASAP.

Then again, it might just be a dll like others have said.