Hard Drive Failure Computer Virus

Another busy start to the week in the laptop repairs section of our computer workshop in Perth.

Several cases of an older computer virus that seems to have been updated to get past most main stream internet security solutions have been dropped of this morning.

The infection first makes it's appearance after a seemingly normal Shutdown or Reboot. After starting as normal, a box will suddenly pop up claiming that your hard drive is about to fail as shown in this screen shot:

Hard Drive Failure Virus Screen Shot

This virus also hides all your files and most of your icons which has the effect of inducing panic in most people!


By the time you see this, your computer or laptop is infected and your anti virus / internet security has been compromised .

At this point, we are just starting to determine the best method for removing this virus and will update this entry once the virus removal method has been formalised.

As we take great care with protecting your data during the virus removal process, all your data will be safe.

Virus Removal Update

After a bit of work, and we now have quite a few 'live' subjects to work on,

The virus removal process has been successfully formalised without data loss.

FACT: Hard Drives Fail!

Over the Festive Season the computer repair workshop in Perth dealt with a higher than normal work load of computer hard drives that had failed or where about to fail as in this case:

Notice the continuous blocks of RED. In this case we were able to clone the entire drive onto a new one and the client's data is safe - for the moment.

The are some things in life that are fairly easy to guarantee:

1. Tax & VAT will increase
2. Same for fuel
3. All hard drives WILL fail at some point!!

So just because you have a copy of your data on your computer's hard drive, and some of you will have backups on external hard drives so Bonus Points for you.

BUT your computer and external hard drive both share communal power and the same room so the one disaster can wipe out BOTH

The more copies of your vital data that you have the more changes you have of recovering your data. On site and off site copies are essential. 

Leave a protected copy of your data with a distant friend or member of the family.

For really important stuff also email a copy to yourself and leave in on your web mail!!

So please, please take care of your precious irreplaceable photos, documents, music etc etc