Corrupt files?? Is it a virus or what??

hey guys...tonight i had some problems with my <1month old 1520. I got the music off my girlfriends ipod and transferred them into itunes folder. I deleted a few files and played a few. I then deleted the first folder with the mp3 files because itunes stores them separately. Anyway, they played fine for awhile even after deleting my tracks.

I then go in later and things just aren't right...

1) First i try to play some music and the music won't play. Even the stuff i didn't delete the original folder for won't play, in Itunes or WMP.
2) Then i realize i have an internet connection but it keeps asking me to connect to a network and that i am disconnected. Anytime i click something like "connect to a network" or anything down by the taskbar icon of the network connection it will lock up windows.
3) I have AVG anti-virus and have always been fully protected according to windows security manager. But now it is saying i don't have any malware protection in both anti-virus or spyware. AVG is up and running, did a full scan and came up with nothing!
4) So a friend tells me to do a system restore. I go in and choose what date to restore back to, and i hit next. It then pops up saying that "disk OS (C: ) has errors". Crap...so it says to check the disks. I check and it keeps saying cannot check when disk is running, but i finally mess with the check boxes and get it to scan and it stops after a few seconds and says "1 large file records processed" and exits out.
5) I type chkdsk into the search and run that. It comes up saying chkdsk found errors, but cannot continue in read-only mode. A box has popped up before saying "corrupt files, run chkdsk" so i finally did.

So basically...i have no clue whats wrong. Everything else seems fine but those problems. What is the first step in finding out what the corrupt files are and how to fix this. I would prefer not to do a clean install but if worst comes to worst i can. Thanks and have a nice day! BUD

 

Did you run chkdsk with "/f" switch? Without that it won't fix anything, it will only report errors. When you run "chkdsk c: /f" it should ask you whether you want to schedule it for scanning on the next boot, say yes and reboot.

 

is this the only thing i can do? are there any ideas of what could have happened and what i can do to fix this?

 

Your hard drive may have developed bad sectors. That's what chkdsk checks for. You can try chkdsk /f or chkdsk /r to attempt repair, but it can't complete repairs while Windows is running. That's why you have to reboot -- so that chkdsk can do its stuff before Windows loads.

It's also possible you have a RAM problem or some other problem that caused the data on the hard drive to become corrupted. But see if chkdsk can fix things.

 

First step would be to download and run "HiJack This" and have the log analysed. It's an excellent free tools to run diagnostics on your machine. (not to make any publicity or anything) but there are forums out there specialised in computer bugs and viruses. I recently used one such to help me get rid of the Virtu_Mundo trojan.

 

well i can't get the chkdsk to run. I tell it to run at the next boot up but still won't run. I had it running this morning by clicking F12 i believe but now that screen is different than earlier and i can't find out where the screen is.

 

Click Start and type
cmd
in the box and OK it.
That should bring up a Command window. From there try running
chkdsk /f
or
chkdsk /r
and reboot.

If that's not working, you could try booting off the Windows DVD and running a system repair.

If you think you might have a virus that AVG didn't detect, you could try an online virus scanner like Housecall.
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

 

I think that the advice from chelet is good and will probably work well. If his recommendations don't help, though, I'd attempt to remove everything you downloaded from the iPod, and iTunes, Apple etc, since downloading the music seems to have caused your problems.

Some folks don't approve of registry cleaners, but after deletion of everything Apple/iTunes/iPod, I'd run a free program call RegSeeker. Good luck with this.

 

alrite i may try that first then because it still didn't run the chkdsk even when i did it his way. I was about to do throw in the windows dvd but i guess i will try the apple thing first

 

Well I really wish i wasn't a complete newb at this kind of stuff. I have tried everything you guys have told me but nothing ever seems to work. I ran the RegSeeker but i don't know what to do after i run it.

If i do a clean install, i can get Vista Ultimate free through my university so i would attempt that if possible. Is this the way to go? Please just work with me and give me step by step procedures when telling me something to do because i get nervous and don't know what to do when messing with stuff. Thanks alot so far! BUD

 

The purpose of running RegSeeker was just to rid your system of Apple and iTunes remnants after deletion of the programs. In my experience, trying to get rid of anything Apple from a PC is as difficult as trying to get rid of Norton. Sorry this idea was just another flop.

I'm not clear on whether you've attempted, as chelet suggested, to try a system repair. If you have a Windows disk, you can possibly fix this problem without losing all your data.

 

That is in fact the only thing i haven't tried...what do i have to do to do the system repair?? Pop in the disc and boot from cd-drive or what?

I appreciate the help for the RegSeeker though i am up to try anything!

 

Stick the disc in, reboot, and I think you have to press F8 at the splash screen and choose to boot from the DVD. After it boots off the DVD you should be able to follow the prompts to repair your installation.

 

Yes, just pop in the Windows CD and follow the on screen instructions. However, IIRC, to repair your system (been a while for me; I use OSX and Linux), you ignore the initial "Repair Windows" option. You'll see it a second time later - check it then.

@ anyone who has done this recently, please correct me - quickly, for B17's sake - if I'm off target here.

B17, you might want to PM chelet, or Google "How to do a Windows System Repair" just to be sure.

 

i had almost the same problem on my 1420.
i booted up one day and it said winmail is not able to start, then it said it was because my disk might be full, which was impossible. then my mcafee virus scan sector went corrupt and it would not even alow me to go to a restore point because of the corruption and chkdsk would not run. then i noticed all my games that came with vista up and dissappeared. finally i said f it and i did a total restore which i was going to do eventually. now i just have to get my microfone back up and check some of my usb drivers cuz when i plug it my ipod it says "this device can perform faster blah blah etc."

 

You are correct. When booting from the recovery CD it will ask if you want to install or repair once. If you select install, it will check for previous installations of windows on your hard disk's partitions. Then, you can select the partition that windows is installed on and select to repair it. After you select that, it basically goes through all of the motions you would go through if you were doing a fresh install, except that you aren't formatting any partitions or losing any of your files.

 

ok wow...this is amazing...

So i finally was able to get the thing to run from the cd-rom at boot, as it took 3 restarts to get it to go. When i finally got it, i found the Repair Windows icon and it went to the same box i had seen before, which did nothing. I clicked on system restore and tried to do a restore from the day before everything went wrong. Every time i tried before it didn't work, but this time it actually restored the computer back to the 24th, and amazingly everything works as planned. I believe it finally worked because i got the chkdsk to work, and it found like 70 corrupt files and said it fixed them. So basically i owe everything to you all! Thank you for all your help, i truely appreciate it.

But now the greatest question of all...is there anyway to tell what caused all these random problems??? How do i prevent it from happening again?

 

A happy ending!
Not sure about the corrupt files. Might help to know from where your gf got her music. If all the songs were legitimate, my guess would be that your machine just didn't appreciate Apple/iTunes, or the app used to download from the iPod.

 

sooo yeah i spoke too soon...

it has to be one of 2 problems here. It was working fine. Of course i opened back up itunes and imported all the music back into itunes. It was all working fine and i played both songs from my cds, and songs from her ipod i had on my computer. All was well...I then installed some updated it claimed i needed. There were 2 updates...

1-Update for Windows Vista (KB933928)
2-Update for Windows Defender - KB915597 (Definition 1.21.2945.3)

I would have to speculate that it is the updates since everything was working until i restarted for the updates to install. It is back to the old "saying i have no internet connection, songs won't play, etc..."AHHHHH! i was good for 5 minutes!

 

Do you have the latest version and updates for iTunes? I believe it's 7.4.2. If not, I think that would likely be your problem.

I can remember reading that there were compatibility issues between iTunes and Vista, and at one point Apple was suggesting that potential Vista users should wait for the latest version of iTunes to be released. Seems like this was recent, but to be honest, I can't really remember exactly when this took place.

 

yeah i have the latest version and you are correct it is 7.4.2.

I guess i will try and restore back once again and just not do either of those 2 things and see what happens

 

ok well i restored back again, but this time i installed the updates and have done nothing with itunes. I actually deleted all of itunes, except for the music. It seems to be doing fine, but when i woke it up from sleep just now, i had to hold the power to get it to turn off because the pointer would move but couldn't click on anything. It is working fine right now, and i hope it stays this way for the future, but i really need itunes! I may try and do a fresh install of itunes again, and a fresh install of my gf's ipod, and go from there. At least i know how to make it work again. Thanks again.

 

Buddy, I knew I'd read something about the issue you're having: SmartComputing, Aug 07, pg 12. The article specifically addresses Vista corrupting iPod files when ejecting an iPod from a PC. According to the info in the article, you should get, in addition to the latest version of iTunes, Vista Update KB936824. Hope this will finally solve your issue.

 

ahhh that sounds perfect...but apparently it is not for my system as the details say for 64 bit vista...i downloaded anyway and says it is not for my system. So hmm back to square one... i thought a clean install would do something but since you say that i'm not sure if that will do the trick.

 

Damn. Just re-read the article and it does not mention anything about 64 bit. Sorry.

 

hey man no need for the apology but yeah if you go to microsofts website, which is where i searched for the update...there are 2 versions, one for 64 bit and one for x86 based machines, both say they do not apply to my computer.

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936824

The only thing, is that the update makes it seem that it corrupts files on the ipod, but it didn't do that to her ipod, just on my computer. I may have read it wrong.