infected and can't boot up

I operate on Vista and have been using Kaspersky 2012 for antivirus. I homeschool my kids and have started using the latest Firefox for internet. In the last couple of weeks I've had some weird problems. My wireless router settings reset on their own. A few days later internet started freezing on me fairly often. I tried IE and still had the freezing problem. The last couple of days I've tried to do a full scan with Kaspersky and the computer would crash and say it was trying to boot from CD. Yesterday after tryingto scan it crashed and wouldn't boot up. Various error codes: system volume on disk is corrupt, atbroker.exe corrupt, hard drive not found, etc. I don't know how I did it but after running startup repair repeatedly I was able to boot up and I should have known better but I tried kaspersky scan and it crashed. Now I'm back to doing startup repair to infinity again. I have tried to start in safe mode repeatedly but it just restarts or crashes. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm a new member myself and I'm certainly not an expert but I am very interested in whether or not you are able to solve your problem

How are you doing the startup repair?

I suspect others will have better recommendations for you but I have rescued some of my friends computers with the following procedures
--- Set up your computer as a standalone unit
--- Disconect your computer from being able to connect to the internet: Shut off your wireless router and/or your ISP provided modem
--- The idea is to not allow whatever infection(s) you have from being able to call home when you boot up the computer
--- I know you said you cannot boot into Safe Mode but try it again

If it still doesn't boot into Safe Mode, then you are back to square one

However, if it does boot into Safe Mode, do some maintenance items:
--- go into Control Panel, Internet Options and clear your Browsing history including checking delete browsing on exit
--- Then go into the Advanced tab and set the cookies to Override automatic cookie handling: Accept first party cookies, block third party cookies & allow session cookies
--- Run disk cleanup
--- Then go into startups and uncheck everthing (Look for and record unrecognizable items and note if there are some blank entries)
--- Shut the computer down. Start back up in Safe Mode again
--- If you get this far, please post back and let us know that the computer is at least functioning and the next step forward will need to be determined

No dice. It still says "windows error recovery, launch startup repair" then goes to "system recovery options". I have to select a keyboard layout and then I have an option to "load drivers" but all folders are empty. I click through to something that says "choose a recovery tool". I try command prompt to do "chkdsk/f" but it says cannot run volume in use by another process. I run "chkdsk" it shows a couple of attribute records corrupt. It says "errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read only mode." Exit cmd. Then select "startup repair" option. Eventually blue screen "A problem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer, etc." At the bottom it says "Technical information: *** STOP: 0x000000F4 (0x00000003, 0x8375c110, 0x8B9B8CD4, 0x00000000) ***win32k.sys-Address 8B9B8CD4 base at 8B800000, DateStamp 4549aea2" So that's everyting and I definitely would rather all commmunication to hppen with a moderator/programmer.

Hello, I have asked someone that handles these non booters, I feel though the Stop 04 error may be a failing hard drive.

After what seemed like millions of attempts at startup repair I was finally able to boot into one of the accounts on my pc. It would not allow me to open my admin account. I did a little troubleshooting and searching and was finally able to change some settings and was able to access my admin account. I did disk cleanup and defragged. I restarted into safe mode with command prompt and ran chkdsk /f. After rebooting and doing another disk cleanup it told me to run chkdsk /c. I did that and did another disk cleanup. It's still slow on reboot, most especially if I'm trying to go through safe mode but if I wait long enough it will do it. So now I can get in, internet is running very quickly, but every time I try to run my Kaspersky the computer crashes and when I reboot it says "unknown failure". So thanks for the help, I'll be reposting in a different area as I assume that I may not be infected?

Nice work! and best wishes in getting the final solution.

What an excellent summary of all that you have done

As a result, the computer is slow on reboot, you are able to access your admin account, the internet is running very quickly & the computer still crashes when attempting to run Kaspersky



I know you said you will be “reposting in a different area as I assume that I may not be infected?” and I am still very interested in following all that you are doing



However, on the assumption that you “may not be infected?”

--- That hasn’t been proven yet. Disable Kaspersky completely

--- Go to http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/ , Download & run the quick scan

--- Quarantine whatever it finds so you can refer to whatever infections it finds

--- As I said, I’m new here but from the threads I’ve read, the moderators are great at providing help once they know what infections are involved

--- If you do not have any infections, then contact Kaspersky support for the crashing issue, http://usa.kaspersky.com/support

--- Like so many other companies it’s quite the job to contact them by phone



Do you have the disks to return the computer back to it’s original condition?

--- It might be worthwhile to do a fresh re-install

--- If you don’t, consider http://www.restoredisks.com/



On the drivers, you can go to the manufacturers website, download the drivers for your computer and burn them to disc. You can do this on someone else’s computer if necessary

--- You can go into Device Manager and see if there are any yellow or red items



On the suspicion that there could be a hard drive problem, now that you have the computer running, see if you have a hard drive diagnostic program and see what the results are

--- In fact you might have diagnostic help available on the manufacturers website