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computer got virus...

RyCan3

RyCan3

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 13, 2010
632
492
So I'm in a dilema. My wife's computer got a virus and will no longer turn on. This was the computer that her iphone 4 was synced to. So we are now wondering if she plugs her phone into my laptop, a) will she lose all her music b) will she lose her apps. c) is there a way for her to log in to her account on itunes and all her music be there.

She doesnt want to lose her music or apps but wants to be able to back up and update software.
 
forgot to mention her computer wasnt backed up.
 
No. You can re-d/l the apps for free. With the songs, if you bought them through itunes you might be able to re-d/l for free.
Why doesn't she have a backup? I'm guessing she has a windows computer. A windows computer (any computer for that matter) without a backup is stupid.
 
well we did have a back up but we had bad flooding about a month ago and lost everything on our first floor...
 
Don't think you need a hard time about backups, learnt the hard way.

Can't even get into the PC in Safe Mode?

Edit: That Senuti is wicked. Used it before.
 
just saw that the program only works for mac...

We did have a backup but like i said earlier the flood we experienced took everything. Her computer will not even turn on...
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

You have to start it in safe mode if you can( it's different from maker to maker just look it up on google). Then you can pull all the important stuff of the pc to an external drive and after that you may need to start off with a clean slate wether you do or don't you need to run the drive thru a virus program before transferring
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

If you had a Mac you wouldn't have this issue :)
 
I still have my doubts about a virus corrupting the hard drive. Even in Windows.

What makes you think it was a virus? What OS do you have?
 
windows xp. Trust me, we have taken it to 3 places and they said its done
 
RyCan3 said:
windows xp. Trust me, we have taken it to 3 places and they said its done
Click to expand...

What exactly did they tell you? I've never heard of a virus corrupting all the data on a hard drive. It would take a while. And if it isn't all corrupt you can recover some, if not all of it.

Did they say the hard drive died? Because that is fairly common, on Macs too.
 
no idea she took it and came back saying that they said they would have to replace the whole hard drive. Her laptop was so old that we said no thanks
 
It doesn't sound like a virus, but it sounds like a damaged hd. There is a difference. :rolleyes:
Damaged HDs are recoverable, depending on how much money you're willing to spend.

FYI: it takes a week--at the most--to get a new hd, so there's no excuse not to have backup for a month(!).
 
RyCan3 said:
no idea she took it and came back saying that they said they would have to replace the whole hard drive. Her laptop was so old that we said no thanks
Click to expand...

So they said the hard drive is dead basically. I still wouldn't trust them, I would test it for myself. It's AMAZING some of the stuff they tell people, including me.

By the way, if it died and it's not readable (which is what I am guessing happened) it probably has nothing to do with a virus. Most hard drives last ~4-7 years, but there are plenty of exceptions (one of my 10 month old hard drives died last week).

Test to see if you can see the data on the hard drive by booting into a linux distro and try to mount the hard drive.
 
eastercat said:
It doesn't sound like a virus, but it sounds like a damaged hd. There is a difference. :rolleyes:
Damaged HDs are recoverable, depending on how much money you're willing to spend.

FYI: it takes a week--at the most--to get a new hd, so there's no excuse not to have backup for a month(!).
Click to expand...

sounds more like a mobo problem to me.
 
you could always go to the apple store, download senuti Onto one of the machines there, bring in a external hard drive and copy it off there computer to take home. Dont ask the staff for help and they probably won't bother you.
 
bigjobby said:
sounds more like a mobo problem to me.
Click to expand...

... Because it won't boot? I'm curious as to what makes you think that. I know the techs at Best Buy, etc, are crazy, but I think they can figure out if it's a bad hard drive.

OP, what happens when you try to boot it?
 
A virus cannot just stop your computer from booting... unless it happens to be a trojan affecting your ROM but that is almost impossible so I won't get into that. As mentioned earlier, it is most likely a damaged HD problem or something else which we cannot crack down as we don't have full details. If it is a mac (sorry I didn't read through all the posts) then try Apple store and they may help. If it is windows, throw it out the window (sorry - i just don't like them). Btw, don't throw it out - ask someone else for help on it as I'm lazy to type more.
 
saberahul said:
A virus cannot just stop your computer from booting... unless it happens to be a trojan affecting your ROM but that is almost impossible so I won't get into that. As mentioned earlier, it is most likely a damaged HD problem or something else which we cannot crack down as we don't have full details. If it is a mac (sorry I didn't read through all the posts) then try Apple store and they may help. If it is windows, throw it out the window (sorry - i just don't like them). Btw, don't throw it out - ask someone else for help on it as I'm lazy to type more.
Click to expand...

It's Windows, but I think he should try to recover it.

Regardless it's best to do diagnostics on your own then to bring it to someone at a store who might know what they are doing.
 
thanks for your help guys. I'm going to see what I can do. Really appreciate it!!!
 
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