HELP! My T410i appears to have a virus.

[lindarenwick]

I noticed on  Sunday that my T410i was getting slower and slower.  The first thing I did was run a Microsoft Security Essentials virus scan which was fine.  I also ran a Spybot scan which came up with something which I got rid of.  However I can no longer even boot the machine up normally though I can get into safe mode but have no idea what to do once I am in!!  I've pressed the blue ThinkVantage button and it ran some sort of scan last night.  The report said

Pass Controller Diag

Error Code 0000 Read verification failed

The machine is 19 months old so no longer in warranty

Of course I haven't done a R & R back up for ages.

I'm desperate - can anyone please help???

[richk]

It sounds like you don't have a virus but your hard drive has died. If you can get the drive hooked up to another machine (not as a boot drive) it is possible you can get some of the data off

[lindarenwick]

How do I do that??

[richk]

First, if you have set a password on the drive, go to the BIOS and remove it. You need to take the drive out and find another machine (a friend's?) that can add it. If you can find a second thinkpad, you could use an ultrabay hard drive adapter

[lindarenwick]

I've managed to boot up in normal mode and am running a malware bytes scan but it is so slow - 8 hours so far.  Any further ideas?

[Bugbatter]

Hi Linda,

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"I also ran a Spybot scan which came up with something which I got rid of"

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Your "something" doesn't give us much to go on. In my experience, Spybot has been notorious for incomplete removals.

Please post your log from MBAM and depending on the results, we'll see where to go from there. You will find the log at MBAM's Files tab listed with the date of the scan.

[lindarenwick]

Hi.  My ThinkPad seems to be dead.  I did get it to boot up normally this morning but now it tries, goes to repair hard disk and then ends up on the ThinkVantage page but nothing happens. 

Spybot found Babylon.toolbar.  When I did the Malaware bytes scan it came up with three things, Adword.mywebsearch, joke.xmas and pup.funwebproducts.  Each of those has a location which I have taken a note of.

Of course I haven't done a back up for ages and I mean ages and I've got work and, in fact, my life on there.

Does anyone think that there is any hope? 

[Bugbatter]

Can you still get into Safemode?  If so, see if you can backup your important documents, music, and pictures to CD's, external HD, USB flashdrive, etc.

If you select "Safemode with Networking" are you able to get to the internet? If not, it might be time to proceed under the assumption that the HD has gone bad and needs to be replaced.