Need Help re: Hard Drive virus in Sectors

Howz it going- Was told by some young up and coming computer techs that my hard drive has a virus in some of the sectors- can anyone enlighten me as to what to do- thanx

 

Could it be that you mean a boot sector virus?

 

If it's not a boot sector virus your guru was talking about, can you be a bit more specific? Could you confirm what the techie actually said?

Also -- have you run a virus scan? Many scanners include virus removal tools; more are available from the AV software publishers' sites -- if you know what virus you need to remove. A scan will tell you that.

 

Actually it could be a boot sector virus as system wont even let me boot- tried to go into DOS but system just wont let me go much further- I will find the time to take another look and give more of a precise description but at the moment I'm at work ready to knock off- so will get back shortly

 

A badly-written boot sector virus could have that effect, but it's kind of self-defeating. A machine that won't start can't replicate viruses.

A corrupted boot sector is certainly a possible cause of your problem. Other possibilities exist too. And boot sectors get corrupted by things other than viruses. Stay open to possibilities other than viruses.

I've heard it said that booting into DOS, then running FDISK /MBR will force a re-write of the boot sector, thus eliminating most boot sector problems. But I've never done that myself, so get a second opinion on this approach. And don't do it from within Windows.

And bear in mind that there are some boot sector viruses that need to be present to decrypt the data on the hard drive that the virus has encrypted. If that's the case, you can no longer decrypt the data once you've removed the virus. For those, look to an outfit like Symantec or MacAfee for virus removal tools -- once you have identified a virus to remove.

Symantec (at least) allows you to run a scan from the NAV distribution CD-ROM, and I expect other AV manufacturers do likewise. (Trouble is, the virus definitions on the CD-ROM are going to be well out of date unless it was manufactured last week, but it'll be better than nothing.)

Speaking of Symantec's NAV -- if you have that, did you build a set of Rescue disks? Or someting like it from another manufacturer? Can you borrow a set from someone who has NAV or something like it? You should be able to run a scan from them if you can access your hard drive after booting from a floppy.

This is one of those places where it's handy to have a DOS or Win9x boot disk around (unless you're using a filesystem that DOS can't read). It'll have some basic tools on it that will help figure out what's gone wrong. If you have something like that, here are some questions:

• Can you boot from a floppy or CD-ROM?
• If yes, can you access the hard drive? What result do you get when you try? (And what OS is providing that response?)
• After booting from a floppy, what info does FDISK report about the drive?

And it's kind of hard to offer advice that won't do more harm than good without knowing something about your system -- like:

• What's the size of the drive you can't boot from?
• Is there more than one partition on that drive? (If yes, describe the partition sizes and structure.)
• What operating system are you using on that system?
• What filesystem are you using on the hard drive?
• Do you have a boot floppy for the OS and filesystem you're using?
• Can you boot from a CD-ROM?
• What anti-virus tools do you have available?