Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

Getting a blancco hardware information report after a crash

May 7, 2017 7:06AM PDT

I am posting this in the hardware subsection because I myself I am really not sure what the problem actually is, but here is the thing:

Some time ago I and my family noticed the computer had started to heat up a lot more than usual and on a few occurrences even suddenly shut down on its own. We thought it was from the ventilation system, for it had happened to an older computer of ours because of all the dust and also hair from our cat that had collected in there, which we had easily fixed by moving the computer to a slightly more elevated location and cleaning it up. But the new computer is less than an year old and already experiencing problems with that.
Today I was going to take a look at it, but first turned it on and opened some stuff to see if it would heat up. Without even any heat, it just shut down after about 10 minutes and when I tried to switch it back on, it made rumbling noises as it tried to turn on, but in the end failed to do so. It did this a couple of times before I took it and carefully shook it back and forth while it tried to turn on. I had done that with the previous computer and with this one it worked too. After me shaking it like that if did manage to start. So there surely is some mechanical issue, that's clear enough...
When it switched back on, it firstly showed me the ASRock logo with the usual commands at the bottom right (the windows is windows 7 btw), then a text saying Initializing Intel(R) Boot agent etc...
And then a Blancco report poped up, like one of those you would get if you had just wiped a hard drive, bit without any info about an actual wipe process, just info about the computer. And it doesn't load anything else, thst screen just sits there. Ive restarted the computer several times now, it hasn't changed.
I dont think that anyone in the family has ever even used or downloaded such software. I read today that there are viruses that look like Blancco clean up exe's that get past antivirus scans (which I had only done a few days ago), but I dont know if this is one.
If I press ctrl alt del, it sends me to the ASRock screen for a few seconds before bringing me back to Blancco, but if I make a command on time, it does send me elsewhere (e.g. I entered BIOS , but I am not familiar with it and therefore haven't done anything). The fact that it is showing me this screen makes me worried that whatever happened might have wiped the hard drive on our computer. My parents are coming home tomorrow, all of us have precious data in the computer and today is sunday, so no technicians are working. I made a few calls but to no avail.

Tomorrow I will surely go and have it fixed, but until then how can I find out if our data is still there? Can I bypass the Blancco report screen myself and start windows? And if the worse has already happened and we have lost data, how can I try to restore it? What is this Blancco thing doing on the startup screen?

I am so sorry for the long post, I am just feeling lost and don't know what to think.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Clarification Request
About saving files.
May 7, 2017 7:23AM PDT

As it is a PC we do that on a schedule because it's a PC. If you forget to do that, you can use any bootable OS to get the files out. There are dozens of solutions given over the past 15 years. Here's a Linux tip that you never learn Linux. Read http://tips.oncomputers.info/archives2004/0401/2004-Jan-11.htm to see that you don't learn Linux.

Try a more current Linux distro.

About working the issue.

BOOT SAFE MODE. Try each until you are in and then use MSCONFIG to disable this POC.

- Collapse -
Answer
Won't boot
May 7, 2017 3:14PM PDT

Don't shake the machine while the hdd is spinning, that's a good way to trash it.

Grab a copy of linux and put it on a disc.
There are many flavors of linux here's a link to one.
https://osdn.net/projects/sfnet_zorin-os/downloads/9/zorin-os-9.1-core-64.iso/

Boot the disc and browse around the hdd.
Should not take long to see if your files are there.

You've just learned why backups are so important.
It's not a matter of 'if' it's 'when' the machine goes wonky.