In need of advice...

POSTED BY: Wulfenstar
UPDATED: Friday, July 11, 2008 22:06
VIEWED: 1971
PAGE 1 of 1

WULFENSTAR

Thursday, July 10, 2008 7:45 PM

Ok, so I searched the net looking for a solution to this problem...

and have come here for advice.

My Cd/DVD-R drive keeps opening and closing, on its own.

Near as I can figure, some stupid Trojan horse got in. Spyware killers, firewalls, and virus protection have done nothing to stop it.

Anyone else have this problem? If so, how did you fix it? Its annoying as hell.

I know, somewhere out there, some little 10 year old super-geek is clapping his hands with joy at his newest little creation.

But come on...why can't you little hacker basturds come up with something a little better? Something to help people, instead of annoying them or destroying their harddrives?

Why not figure out a code to transfer politicians money to the private accounts of folks? Or stop the outgoing money to other nations? Maybe take out the Red-Light cameras that are everywhere?

Why do you little otaku have to fuck with my computer?

Do something better, dammit.

In any case, whatever it is has killed Spybot, snuck thru Norton, and beat the best firewall I could afford.

Any help would be appreciated

CHRISISALL

Thursday, July 10, 2008 7:51 PM

New computer time.

Helpless Chrisisall

FREMDFIRMA

Thursday, July 10, 2008 8:37 PM

#1 - clean boot disk.
If you ain't got one, get someone to make you one.

#2 - Norton/MCaffees is useless, the ONLY time I ever had a virii on one of my PCs... it CAME from the goddamn McAffee install disk!
(Hell of a testimonial for an A/V that is, eh ?)

#3 - Most Commercial Firewalls have built-in, unclosable back doors for certain agencies to use, and many hackers know where they are.

You want REAL protection instead of a false sense of security, get Kaspersky.
http://www.kaspersky.com/

I also highly reccommend Frisk Software products, such as F-Prot.
http://www.f-prot.com/

For some reason, the "Norse" for lack of a better description, countries and the damn Russians are far, FAR better than our current crop of dumbed down code clobberers WE laughingly call programmers, especially when it comes to this kind of thing.

Ad-Aware is good for identifying the stuff, not so hot at actual removal.
http://lavasoft.com/

And be advised, fully half of anti-spyware progs are actually themselves spyware, and a quarter of them (esp "free" products) will throw you a phony list of false positives in an attempt to scare you into buying their useless and ineffective product.

Your BEST bet at this point, especially if you're dealing with a rootkit or polymorphic, is a full system restore from the disks/CD that came with your comp, followed by install of a minimum of TWO of the above products.

Now, that being said, if you truly NEED to recover data before the system restore, as that will wipe the drive, use a clean boot disk and do it manually, and then AFTER installing TWO of the above products, recover your data from the burned CD or Disks.

That's your best bet, short of taking a shotgun to the hard drive.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

SIGMANUNKI

Thursday, July 10, 2008 9:09 PM

Just to add two things from Frem's post:

- make sure you format your MBR when re-installing (I think windows does this by default)

- make sure you leave your computer off for several minutes before wiping your HDD with

But, before you do all this, you might want to download and try out a Linux LiveCD. If the problem persists then it's certainly a hardware issue rather than some nasty piece of software.

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Friday, July 11, 2008 5:56 AM

Maybe I'm confused.
Your CD/DVD player drawer open and closes.
You assume this has something to do with software?
Nothing else is malfunctioning?
Is that right?

My process:
unplug player, or swap with another at that cable connection/address. Does problem go away? if so, the player's position limit switch is bad, dirty, or out of alignment.
If same problem exists with swapped player, post back for more info.
Are you a smoker?

About anti-viral:
Spybot has gone downhill, as well as AVG, and adaware is no longer as good.
Highly recommended are Avast and Avira, both with free home editions to download. They each catch a little bit different stuff.

SIGMANUNKI

Friday, July 11, 2008 6:20 AM

@jewelstaitefan:

Not a player, the drive in the computer.

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

NEWOLDBROWNCOAT

Friday, July 11, 2008 6:36 AM

JewelStaiteFan makes good points.

If you're *S*U*R*E* *S*U*R*E* sure it's a software problem, the only positive cure is to reformat your HDD and reinstall Windows and all your software. I've done this a couple of times- it can be done if you have the original disks and all your stuff is legal, but it means several days of lost time, and you'll always lose something- some URL or data file or user account info or music or fanfic you're writing, something. So ya hafta be sure.

If you've got a family friend Geek, have him check it out first. My daughter's ex-BF bailed me out the last time, took him a full day before he traced down and eliminated every trace of the infection.

If you can, get the same Geek to look for a hardware problem, or try replacing the CDR drive- they're cheap enough and it might be an easy fix. They usually come with their own new driver software, which might also solve the problem .

CITIZEN

Friday, July 11, 2008 6:51 AM

It's pretty unlikely to be a hardware problem, the switches inside would probably cause it to pop in and out, but if you haven't got a drive to test it with you can be fairly sure it's not that. If the drive tray is popping in and out constantly it's more likely, if it's happening intermittently it's software. There's a lot of things it could be, from the drives BIOS to signal bleed on the IDE channel, but they're all about as likely as a Geek at a cocktail party. I'd bet real money that you've got a rootkit or a dead piece of software in the registry taking control of the drive. It's good practice to format and reinstall occasionally anyway.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

WULFENSTAR

Friday, July 11, 2008 2:23 PM

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the advice.

6IXSTRINGJACK

Friday, July 11, 2008 2:31 PM

I'd get a typewriter and say fuck it

"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." http://www.myspace.com/6ixstringjack

WASHNWEAR

Friday, July 11, 2008 2:40 PM

Hey, Wulf - are you sure something like a bagel crumb or a piece of shrapnel hasn't got in the drive's little tray-works and is causing interference with the tray's travel back and forth? Something like that happened to a PC here at work recently...

It was like a Spaniard in the works when we got here!

HERO

Friday, July 11, 2008 7:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Wulfenstar:
My Cd/DVD-R drive keeps opening and closing, on its own.

Assuming a technical solution does not appear...try this:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/exorcism.htm

H

FREMDFIRMA

Friday, July 11, 2008 10:06 PM

Also check the position of small animals such as cats.

My buddies dog has a tendancy to whap his home entertainment system switches with his tail as he passes, leading to a few WTF incidents when settings changed and no one was near the unit.

Also two of our cats KNOW which button opens the CD door, how and why, I got no clue, but when they get in a mood to do it, they will sit there opening and closing the door just to amuse themselves.

And lastly, if you have an IR remote for your PC, some of the NECs came with one, and leave it on the couch for a pet to flop on or play with, could be that too.

Still, my above advice holds - if you're using that stuff to (no offense) *snicker*.. "protect", your computer, you're without a doubt infected with half a dozen things already.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it