Is this a virus/error - please help...

Hi guys,

I have 3 hard drives in my PC

C: 60gb FAT32 - OS Boot (XP Pro Sp2)
D: 120gb FAT32 - document storage
F: 300gb NTFS - everything else

One evening I left the PC switched for about an hour while chatting to a neighbour (I think I left it logged onto the internet - I am behind a firewall/router). When I returned to it the desktop icons were showing the windows icon and there was no response to double clicks. It shut down ok but wouldn't boot up and produced an error along the lines of required files not found.

I managed to boot into a spare OS loaded on a separate HD and on looking at my hard drives which were recognised in the OS;

C: Directory structure intact, folders and subfolders intact, but all files showing as 0 bytes, zip files showing as 1k but extract to an empty folder.
D: Inaccessible.
F: Coming up with 'not formatted message'.

The drive capacities were being reported correctly but the used space was completely incorrect only about 5% of what it really was.

I tried some data recovery software on drives C & D which bought up the directory and folder structure but showed 0 byte files. On many files it displayed a 'modified on' date and time which was the data and rough time I left the PC unattended. I also tried the XP recovery console to fix the mbr and repair installation but no great success.

Can anyone tell me if I have been struck by a virus? If so which one?


Any help much appreciated.

Regards,

Mark.

 

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