I'm not sure what's going on...

Joshua Brown

New Member
Hi! I'll try to be brief:

I've been having some issues with my main Win10 PC. Strange behaviors such as constant BSOD's when copying files. I couldn't click on the Cortana search in the taskbar. MBAM kept failing to load, saying that there could be rootkit activity. Slow booting. I had installed a Monero mining app which kept loading at startup even after asking it not to, uninstalling it several times, and trying to delete all of the files with Revo several times. Windows would refuse to boot into safe mode despite trying ten different ways to do so. Various other stuff.

So I decided to backup my essential files to my external backup and reinstall windows. This wasn't easy because if I tried to copy any considerable amount of data, I'd get BSOD's and have to restart. Little by little, I eventually got my files onto the external drive and tried to reset my PC from within Windows, but it would refuse to complete, so I created a Win10 DVD installer and tried to boot from that, but apparently my external DVD drive was freezing up the PC, even within the BIOS, to the point where it was unusable. The mouse would only move between the DVD drive motor buzzing. My GUI bios screen scrambled. It was weird! So I tried to create a USB installer using an SD card/reader on another PC, but the 16gb memory card was coming up showing only a 2gb capacity and nothing I did would fix it. Finally, I found my 128gb thumb drive, created a USB thumb drive installer and finally was able to boot from that.

The pre-install screen showed four partitions on my 256gb SSD. Drive 0 - Partitions 1 through 4. Two system and two OEM (Reserved). Deleting or formatting any of the partitions from within the installer didn't work. After trying several times to remove/format the partitions from the installer, I tried booting from my UBCD disc, but again, the system was halting and freezing on boot, and exhibiting other various weird symptoms from having the external DVD drive plugged in, so I created a bootable USB thumb drive of UBCD and was able to get into the main menu.

This is where it gets even more strange (to me):

Through UBCD I deleted all of the partitions on the SSD and used DBAN to wipe the drive. It got up to 75% complete and then failed. I restarted the computer and ...Windows loaded. Windows loaded, and all of my files were still on the drive. So I booted from UBCD again and tried several different wiping programs, which all brought me to the PartedMagic GUI which I couldn't use because the mouse cursor wouldn't move. Finally, I was able to find a wiping utility that worked - I can't remember which one it was and I can't find any mention of it via twenty minutes of Googling the various UBCD wiping tools, but I can tell you it was a try-before-you-buy and gave me the option of doing seven wipe passes). I set the program to 7 passes and let it run overnight. In the morning, I saw the screen that the process was complete, that it had wiped the entire drive from 0 (sectors? I can't remember) to some number in the billions/trillions/whatever. Okay, all done! Ready to recreate the Win10 USB stick and reinstall onto my freshly wiped SSD!

Nope! All four partitions are still there, and none of them were wiped. The partition with the largest amount of space only has 4gb of available storage.

So I then went and cleared out the thumb drive and recreated a UBCD installer on another PC to give the SSD wiping another go. Well! It appears that now my 128gb thumb drive is only showing up as 32gb. It's like every time I try to do anything, another weird problem pops up. I can still create the UBCD installer with 32gb capacity, but why is this other computer misreading the capacity of my external storage(s)? If I format it with 32gb, will it only show up as 16gb next time I have to format it? It's driving me insane...

I'm at an impasse. I can't format the drive. I can't delete partitions. I can't wipe the drive. Does any of this seem explainable to anyone? I could really use some advice here :/
 

Joshua Brown

New Member
Update 1:

The USB Media Creation Tool and Universal USB Installer both recognize the proper capacity of the thumb drive, so I suppose I'm good there.

The name of the disk wiping utility was HDShredder 3.8.1 by Miray.

I just finished deleting all of the partitions, creating a new partition, rebuilding the MBR and setting the new partition to active using a utility within UBCD called ...I think it was either Ranish or Partition Saving 4.00. Recreated the Win10 installer, booted up and STILL the same four partitions on the SSD.

I literally have no idea what's going on here.
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
Is this the same SSD you were having issues with in one of your previous threads? Weren't you also having issues with a desktop or is this unrelated?
 

Joshua Brown

New Member
Is this the same SSD you were having issues with in one of your previous threads? Weren't you also having issues with a desktop or is this unrelated?

I'm not sure what you're referencing but I think its unrelated. I'm just constantly riddled with computer problems lol
 

OmniDyne

Active Member
I'm not sure what you're referencing but I think its unrelated. I'm just constantly riddled with computer problems lol

Haha you posted about pulling an SSD out because it was giving you problems and it still wouldn't work on a different computer. I'm assuming it's a different SSD?
 

Joshua Brown

New Member
I was able to get PartedMagic working by hooking up a wired keyboard/mouse. This is the result of trying to delete the partitions:


I should also say that PartedMagic reported that the drive is about to fail, based on the SMART reading.
 

Joshua Brown

New Member
Haha you posted about pulling an SSD out because it was giving you problems and it still wouldn't work on a different computer. I'm assuming it's a different SSD?

I was trying to get an old Win98 Toshiba Satellite to work using a CF Card as the main drive. That, I gave up on months ago lol maybe it was that?

Edit: no! That was another SSD we were trying to get working on an office computer.
 

johnb35

Administrator
Staff member
If smart status is bad then drive is basically toast. Thats probably why any partition program can't recover or delete. Buy a new drive.
 

Darren

Moderator
Staff member
SMART fail? See if it's covered by warranty from SSD manufacturer, if not replace it.
 
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