I’m trying to fix my aunt’s computer and it may have been infected with spyware or viruses. It is a Sony Vaio desktop (PCV-RX462DS) with a P4, RAMBUS and a Fujitsu drive and Windows Millenium (original install as far as I can tell). I already called Sony and they say they have no issues on record. [B]The system BIOS does not have an autodetect feature[/B].
When I went to go into safe mode, it locked up a few times, then the BIOS would not detect the drive. I used FDISK and it didn’t detect the drive. So I figured the drive maybe died. I went back a few hours later and the drive detected on boot and I tried using a DOS boot disk to get in there and copy some data files off. Mere minutes later, it was no longer detected again! I waited a day, kept the side cover off, and had the drive connected only and outside the PC (not in the cage) and the same thing happened again! First it worked, then a few minutes later the drive spins up on boot, but you never get the head reading clicks and it won’t detect!
So I bought a new drive (WD) and it detected. I used FDISk to format 2 partitions (one for OS to install, one for backup from old drive) and rebooted and formatted. Then the old drive wouldn’t detect again, so I just went on with installing XP from the CD. That went past the copying files stage to the reboot, then it ran setup again…it seems that this [B]brand new drive[/B] [B]will not detect [/B]anymore in the BIOS!!!
I put the drives into [B]another PC[/B] and they [B]will not[/B] detect in there either. All I can think is there is something wrong with the IDE controller, the BIOS, or maybe the power supply? I’m also thinking it may be a heat issue on a component as the drive have detected several times and then stopped. The new WD drive was working fine for about 5 minutes before it “died”.
