Mysterious Crash

[disarmedmeteor]

A very troubling development has taken place in April 1. I personally wasn't there because this was a Saturday evening. But when my boss was trying to print something, she unplugged the backup hard drives while it was backing up. It was setup so that key documents from one computer would be backed up to a folder onto the other computer, and vice versa. This would take place every night. So after a while, the emergency shutdown prompt popped up saying that "A CRITICAL SYSTEM ERROR HAS OCCURRED AND YOUR SYSTEM NEEDS TO GO FOR A SHUTDOWN NOW!" Then when she booted up her computer (fujitsu laptop), it posted fine, but never went through loading the operating system, it showed an error, "HAL.dll is missing." Now after doing some research I found that it was the hardware abstraction layer, and am now completely baffled as to how and what happened. After a recovery it showed that a shutdown command had been run, and absurdly, the hal.dll file was on the desktop. Any ideas as to what might have happened?

 

[disarmedmeteor]

hmm, someone has to have a clue as to what happened...

bump

 

[pt]

no clue at all
weird error

 

[disarmedmeteor]

could it be that it was a hacker attempt?

 

[pt]

could it be that it was a hacker attempt?

it could be a virus

 

[disarmedmeteor]

i checked the virus databases and nothing of this sort came up

 

[randomperson21]

lolz why do your computers always crash my friend?

sounds suspiciously like a virus. i'd definitely do a scan, and not on the host system either.
btw, is the system up and running now?

if not, i'd pull the hdd out, and run a full virus scan on it on another system. then, dump hal.dll back where it belongs, and see if the thing will boot. then trust nothing (pull out critical data, etc) and reload. but thats just me, i get paranoid when i get viruses and tend to go on rampages.

 

[Easy Rhino]

you didnt say which OS you were using.

 

[disarmedmeteor]

Windows XP was on the desktop, and Windows Media Center Edition 2005 was on the laptop. I know, it's so horrible, I will run a virus scan on it, but I doubt it woul come up with anything.

 

[randomperson21]

use a good virus scanner! and not on the host system (viruses can hide themselves)

 

[Easy Rhino]

Windows XP was on the desktop, and Windows Media Center Edition 2005 was on the laptop. I know, it's so horrible, I will run a virus scan on it, but I doubt it woul come up with anything.

oh. haha no wonder i was confused. well this is the linux/bsd/mac osx forum! perhaps a mod should move this to the appropriate forum.

 

[disarmedmeteor]

oh, what type of mod? and what forum?

 

[randomperson21]

yea... i just realized that too. figure out who the mod is for this sub and have them move it.

 

[disarmedmeteor]

i don't get it....

 

[randomperson21]

what part of moving the thread don't you understand?

pm dippy or solaris17 to move it. more people will see it there.

 

[Sasqui]

i don't get it....

Forum administration... the protocol that makes this place unfriendly sometimes.

What backup software was being used...? something got corrupted during the sync when one of the backup drives were unplugged (obviously). Shoot that person.

 

[pt]

i don't get it....

i got what he didn't
mod = moderator
the techpowerup forums have many sub-forums
http://forums.techpowerup.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19

you should have posted this in the software section
now the a moderator will cut your post and post it the correct sub-forum

 

[disarmedmeteor]

i got what he didn't
mod = moderator
the techpowerup forums have many sub-forums
http://forums.techpowerup.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19

you should have posted this in the software section
now the a moderator will cut your post and post it the correct sub-forum

thanks for explaining it to me, but how do i tell a mod to move it?

 

[randomperson21]

you pm them. and by pm i mean personal message. get to a mod's profile and hit "send a personal message to XXXXXXXXXXX". sans the X's. Tell them you'd like it moved.......

pt, can't you move it? just out of curiosity....

 

[pt]

thanks for explaining it to me, but how do i tell a mod to move it?

he will notice this thread sooner or later, or ask a mod of this forum to do it:
just ask to move the thread to it's corret place

 

[disarmedmeteor]

cool, i just pm'd the mod....this should be in the general software section am i right?

 

[randomperson21]

sure.... that sounds ok.

 

[disarmedmeteor]

Forum administration... the protocol that makes this place unfriendly sometimes.

What backup software was being used...? something got corrupted during the sync when one of the backup drives were unplugged (obviously). Shoot that person.

that sounds reasonable enough, my boss is not good with computers at all and from my knowledge, i know to NEVER interfere with a backup process or EVEN disconnecting while it's being accessed, and which would explain why both the computers crashed because they were both being backed up to each other, the windows backup utility was being used btw.