Boot failure !!!

[Lissinho]

Hi,

I updated my OS from Windows 95 to Windows ME. Everything was fine, but today my workmate download a file and then scanned the file with the antivirus program installed in my PC (Norton Antivirus 4.0), the machine frozed and when he restarted the following message appeared:

Invalid system disk
Please replace disk and press any key to continue...

We have tried everything:
- boot with the EBD diskette from WinME: when we try to access "C:" and execute any command ("dir" for example) the system returns an error message that says that the media is invalid (because my OS is in portuguese, the message is "tipo de mídia inválida"
- we tried "sys c:", but the same error message appears.

PLEASE, does anybody knows something about it ? It is the second machine that happened it (was updated from W95), but the first we just formatted the HD, because there was nothing important in it. But in my machine has, and I need to recover its data !!!

PLEASE HELP ME !!

THANKS FOR YOUR ATTENTION...

 

[guidos]

Sounds to me like whatever you decided to download contained a virus...and you MAY end up having to format this one as well. Did you create the Me boot disk from within Me or did you just make a DOS bootable disk? I think Me is FAT32, so if you just made a DOS boot disk, you'll not be able to read the FAT32 partition on the C: drive...it will give the "Invalid media" error. If you have access to a Win98 machine, create a boot disk from there, then try booting your Me machine from it...if you can read C:, then at least you can save your info before you format it. I sure hope this helps a little...

 

[gunthnp]

but 1st try fdisk/mbr this will remake the boot record and if the virus is hiding there it will get out of the boot sector so can see the drive right if that works scan for virus right away. So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

[gunthnp]

but 1st try fdisk/mbr this will remake the boot record and if the virus is hiding there it will get out of the boot sector so can see the drive right if that works scan for virus right away and do not boot off the hard drive till you find it
So long and thanks for all the fish.

 

[Lissinho]

I was using a ME boot disk and I couldn't read C:.

I tried "fdisk /mbr" but it doesn't work either.

I just never saw something like that. I don't know if it was a virus. I used a recovering application (Lost&Found) to get my data (thank God I got it !).

I installed ME again in my PC. If someone knows anything about what happened, PLEASE LET ME KNOW ! Because I don't want to pass throught this again.

Thanks a lot, Guidos and Gunthnp.