Posted on 06/12/2013 6:27:51 AM PDT by timestax
This morning, first thing I see is a warning from Windows 7, that says the hard drive is in imminent danger of failing, and to immediately back up all files. What's up with this. Anybody else getting this. Could it be gubmint boys causing this or just normal failure. DELL laptop is about one year old. Otherwise, up till now =NO PROBLEMS. And ,YES it is turned on. PLEASE, no joking around this time.
Maybe your hard drive is failing and you should back up your important files.
If it gives you an official-looking pop-up that promises to solve the problem, DO NOT CLICK.
It’s almost certainly a Trojan virus.
More than likely, this is malware. If you click on it, it will download some crap you don’t want. If you really think your hard drive has some problems, buy a program that can do some diagnostics or take it to a service shop. More than likely, though, you are being conned and you should have run your anti-virus stuff to try to detect any infections.
Sounds like you might have a hard drive failure in your future. Back up your files and shop around for a good hard drive.
Mine did the same thing last year and yes it did eventually fail.
Hard drives fail...even when the Rats aren’t in power.You’d be wise to try to save your data...now.Just in case.
Definitely back up, then find out what your situation is. You should be able to research the error message to see if it is legit
You have your important stuff backed up as a matter of routing anyway, right?
If you don't, get free 50-GB of storage at https://mega.co.nz/ and copy it up there right now.
They'll often do an advance RMA and get you a new HDD. You replace the HDD, and you can hook up your old HDD with a SATA-to-USB adapter and boot into a utility like Ultimate Boot CD which has utilities to clone your HDD to the new one, and you'll be back online in no time.
I recently had a solid state hard drive fail on me after only 9 months. Newer tech CAN fail. Never put 100% trust on any hardware.
Use some sort of online backup service and you will be a lot less worried, whether this is a malware hoax or not.
Yes. This. This is exactly what it is. Get out. Get out now!
Yes, it is 100% the ‘gubment spooks doing it.
It’s a Trojan. Make sure your firewall is up.
ha HA...I like this!
If you click it, it will take over your computer and you wioll play hell getting rid of it. Months ago NORTON Security took two hours to get me free of it.
And back up the malware along with it?!? Not a good idea. Determine if it is malware first. If needed, get some assistance to do so. Take corrective action. Then, make sure you are running an automated back up and /or have restore points set.
The vast majority of failures don't screech or smoke. They are from bad sectors on the drive, head misalignment, or contaminants like dust or smoke. When the system continually has trouble reading and writing to the drive it can predict that a failure is imminent. Running a checkdisk on the drive will detect bad sectors also.
This is the correct answer.
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